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CIk facts 
About Cutlur 



By 

Rt. Rev. Mons. Patrick F. O'Hare, LL.D. 

J&ctorofSt. Antony's Church, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Author of 

"Mass Explained" and "Devotion to Saint Antony.** 



Preface by the 

Rev. Peter Guild ay, Ph.D. 

Catholic University, Washington, D.C. 



FREDERICK PUSTET & CO. 

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New York, July 4, 1916. 



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Preface 



IT is an accepted conclusion nowadays among the 
" best students of the Protestant Rebellion of the 
sixteenth century that there are "two Luthers— the 
Luther of panegyric, of romance, and fiction, and the 
Luther of history and fact. The former appears in 
the pulpit, in the Sunday school, and in partisan bio- 
graphies ; the latter may be discovered from a careful 
study of his writings and those of his contemporaries, 
but above all from his private letters, of which former 
devotees of Luther would only publish what they 
thought to his credit, garbling or suppressing the rest." 
These words, quoted from a rare little tract on Luther, 
written nearly thirty years ago by a Prelate of the 
Church, who was one of the foremost Reformation 
scholars of that day, may well serve as the keynote of 
this present work with its powerful contrasts between 
the Luther of fact and the Luther of fiction. They 
also sum up the result of all the studies made in the 
life and works of Martin Luther since the last great 
international celebration of 1883 — the four hundredth 
anniversary of his birth at Eisleben. There are many 
who still remember the interest and zeal evidenced by 
tiic Protestant churches throughout Christendom, when 
that fourth centenary was given a world-wide recogni- 
tion. It was a celebration with far-reaching effects ; with 
fatal effects, indeed, for the hero-worship so dear to 
Luther's followers. In Germany, especially, scholars 
and publishers vied with one another in acclaiming 
him as the man to whom the modern world owed 
most,, if not all, of its present liberty. He was hailed 
as the restorer of the truer evangelical life, as the 
spiritual liberator of the human race; and from that 
time down to the present, no ordinary reader has been 
able to keep pace with the output of Lutheran liter- 
ature. 

Probably no man ever lived about whom so much 
has been written as Luther; but it is from the last 



notable Luther celebration of 1883, that we can date 
the foremost works which have appeared on the sub- 
ject. To-day no important source on Luther's life 
and works remains unpublished. The Weimar Edition 
of his works — the typical edition, began to appear in 
1883. Most of the Protestant authors, from whose 
works Monsignor O'Hare takes his quotations, 
have written since that date — Kostlin, Kawerau, 
Paulsen, Kolde, Hagen, Hausrath, Beard and 
others, have all written under the impulse of the 
Luther revival of thirty odd years ago. Throughout 
the whole period of this activity, the Luther of fiction 
and the Luther of historic fact have come boldly into 
conflict, and scholars know with what deplorable re- 
sults for the heresiarch of Protestantism. But the 
ordinary man-in-the-street, for whom this volume is 
particularly designed, is still unaware of these revela- 
tions. Throughout the whole period of this activity, the 
Luther of fiction has been relegated to the realm of 
the unhistorical. Scholars can no longer satisfy them- 
selves with the general platitude that the greatest 
achievement of the race to which he belonged and the 
most important event in history is the Protestant 
Rebellion of the sixteenth century. We can no longer 
hold in the face of what modern scholarship has brought 
to light since 1883 that Luther's rebellion was essen- 
tially the beginning of a new religious movement. The 
Protestant Rebellion marked no new stage in human 
progress ; it did not close the eyes of a dying medieval 
Church; it marked no new dawn of the modern era. 
Protestant scholars of repute no longer hold out to 
their disciples the old misconceptions that the Rebel- 
lion in Germany secured greater purity and spirituality 
in religion. It did not contribute, as we have been 
told so often, to the elevation of the laity and to the 
advancement of woman. It did not fashion a separa- 
tion of secular from ecclesiastical power. It gave no 
extraordinary impulse to literature or to science. It 
did not establish liberty of conscience. In a word, it 
had nothing in its principles or methods, which was to 
ennoble our modern civilization. 

These truths have been self-evident to scholars the 
past twenty-five years. Like all corporate bodies built 



on error, the Lutheran Church of the sixteenth cen- 
tury has fared badly under the piercing light of mod- 
ern research, and Luther himself has become more 
and more remote from all those characteristics of 
modern civilization to which his followers lay claim 
as the legacy of his apostasy. Protestant scholars in 
America, England, and Germany have made plain that 
Luther's idea of God is repugnant to our natural feel- 
ings. Since the publication of Denifle's works, the 
suite of events in Luther's apostasy has had to be 
changed ; and we see at last that the furthermost point 
backwards to which his cleaveage from the Church 
can be traced is not opposition to the Papacy but the 
false idea which seems to have haunted him into 
obsession— his total impotency under temptation. It 
was this negation of the moral value of human actions, 
this denial of one's ability to overcome sin, which led 
to his famous doctrine on the worthlessness of good 
works. The only hope he had was in a blind reliance 
on God, whose Son, Jesus Christ, had thrown around 
him the cloak of His own merits. From this starting- 
point, it was facilis descensus AvernL Opposition to 
all good works, and in particular to monastic regula- 
tions and to Indulgences, led to opposition to author- 
ity, episcopal and papal. Germany was politically ripe 
for revolt at that moment, and the union of the Empire 
and the Papacy made it impossible to distinguish the 
victims, once the national spirit was aroused. That 
Luther aided, and aided powerfully, in this opposition 
to the Holy Roman Empire of both Church and State 
is undeniable; but what Protestant scholars have de- 
nied in no uncertain terms is the long litany of 
triumphs accredited to the Luther of fiction. His 
greatest work — the translation of the Bible into Ger- 
man — is openly called a plagiarism. The claim that 
he is the father of popular education is ridiculed by 
leading Protestant historians. His economic views are 
considered retrogressive even for his own time. The 
assertion that he is the founder of the modern State 
is denied categorically by his latest non-Catholic bio- 
grapher, who tells us that he preferred despotism to 
democracy, and that he never doubted the right and 
duty of the State to persecute for heresy. The Luther 



of fiction is being more and more obscured by the 
Luther of fact. But it takes time for the conclusions 
of scholars to reach the multitude, and with very little 
limitation the old shibboleths of the middle nineteenth 
century are being repeated to-day in Lutheran pulpits, 
Sunday-schools, and partisan biographies. 

We have reached another century-mark in the his- 
tory of the Protestant Church. Four hundred years 
ago, on All Saints' Eve — the Hallow E'en of our days 
— the young Professor of Sacred Scripture in the 
University of Wittenberg attached ninety-five proposi- 
tions, or theses, to the University bulletin-board on 
the portals of the old Castle Church of the town. 
Historians and theologians, both Catholics and Pro- 
testants, have viewed that act in many ways. To some 
it was a defiance hurled at the immoral conditions of 
Europe, a gage thrown down at last, after several cen- 
turies of spiritual conflict, for Rome to pick up or to 
be branded as a cowardly antagonist of German as- 
pirations, of German love and devotion for. pure doc- 
trine, for pure moral living. To others, it was only an 
incident — an incident, it is true, which was to set 
Europe ablaze within five years — but still an incident, 
which might have been seen and soon forgotten, had 
not the temporal condition of Europe been ready for 
the outbreak which followed it. Both sides admit that 
the Christian faith had then fallen upon evil days, but 
both sides have since torn away every vestige of hefo- 
worship from the militant figure of the man who cen- 
tered Europe, political and religious, around himself at 
the Diet of Worms, three years afterwards. Both 
sides have yielded much for and against him in the 
discussions, the polemics, the attacks, the accusations, 
which have swirled around him since. The Protestant 
religious world, although deprived of valuable 
auxiliaries in the Sturm und Drang of the conflict 
which is now throwing the world into confusion, will 
not allow this Fourth Centenary of Luther's Theses 
to pass without an attempt to rehabilitate their great 
hero, despite the results of modern scholarship. 

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that were it not 
for such a work as this, the general reading public — 
both Catholic and Protestant — might have suffered 



this rehabilitation without protest; but Monsignor 
O'Hare has thrown a bridge over the chasm which now 
separates the Luther of 1917 from the Luther of 
1883, and the contrast is so prominent that his con- 
clusions cannot be ignored. The reader is brought in 
these pages into a close, intimate relation with Luther's 
friends and opponents, and every statement is based 
on the most reliable authorities in the Protestant school 
of historical science. The whole gamut of the apos- 
tate's life is here described in a calm, impartial man- 
ner which permits no gainsaying. There are many 
hideous scenes in Martin Luther's life ; there are scenes 
of coarseness, vulgarity, obscenity and degrading im- 
morality 'which can never be forgiven because of a 
"rugged peasant nature." The man stands revealed 
as the very opposite of all that Protestantism has 
claimed for him. But the reader may take up this 
work with the assurance, that here there is no unfair 
attack upon the Founder of Protestantism. It is not 
with a spirit of bitterness or bigotry that Monsignor 
O'Hare describes the real Luther. So long as the 
Luther of fiction exists in popular Protestant literature, 
there can be no common friendly ground for the proper 
appraisal of the Rebellion of 1517. And no man, 
whether he be a Protestant or a Catholic, who has the 
love of Christ in his heart, can look on with indiffer- 
ence, when there is question of an irenic state of mind 
on religious problems, or when there is a possibility of 
a union between the two leading religions of the West- 
ern world. There is no doubt that the religious prob- 
lem to-day is still the Luther Problem, and since almost 
every statement of those religious doctrines, which are 
opposed to Catholic moral teaching, find their authori- 
zation in the theology of Martin Luther, every Cath- 
olic should acquaint himself with the life-story of the 
man, whose followers can never explain away the 
anarchy of that immoral dogma: "Be a sinner, and 
sin boldly ; but believe more boldly still !" 

Peter Guilday, Ph. D. 

Catholic University of America, 
Washington, D. C. 
September fifth, 1916. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



Chapter Pages 

Preface 3-7 

I. Luther — His Friends and Oppo- 
nents 9- 2 9 



II. Luther Before His Defection . . 30- 64 

III. Luther and Indulgences .... 65- 98 

IV. Luther and Justification .... 99-136 
V. Luther on the Church and the 



Pope 137-182 

VI. Luther and the Bible 183-219 

VII. Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion . 220-260 

VIII. Luther on Free- Will and Liberty 

of Conscience ....... 261-31 1 

IX. Luther as a Religious Reformer . 312-367 



CHAPTER I. 



Luther: His Friends and Opponents. 

THIS modest volume is issued to present to the pub- 
lic at large some of the most prominent and im- 
portant features in the life and career of Martin 
Luther, the founder of Protestantism. We wish to 
declare in the beginning that this little work makes no 
pretention to either originality or scholarship; neither 
does it claim to set forth in its pages anything that is 
not already well-known, and fully authenticated in the 
life of Luther and the development of the new system 
of religion he gave to the world. Abler and more com- 
petent writers have long since covered the whole 
ground. Learned and distinguished historians like 
Janssen, Denifle, Grisar, and many others, have painted 
with masterly accuracy the real picture of the reformer 
from material supplied for the most part by his own 
acknowledged writings. These celebrated authors have 
practically pronounced the last word on the protagonist 
and champion of Protestantism, and there seems to be 
slight justification for the publication of a new work 
on the old subject. 

Whilst we recognize all this to be true, we feel 
that we may be pardoned for attempting to tell anew, 
but in greater brevity and directness, the salient and 
more striking features connected with the apostate 
monk of Wittenberg and his religious movement, be- 
cause there are a large number in the community, who 
in the hurry and high pressure of modern life have not 
the time to examine the ponderous and exhaustive 
volumes of the authors alluded to above, and who, more- 
over, have not»the means to secure these works, much 
as they might desire to do so, on account of prohibitive 
prices. Taking all this into consideration, we believe 
we will be excused for intruding on a field that has 
already been well covered, and for presenting to the 
general public a plain, but well-authenticated sketch of 



10 



The Facts About Luther 



the man who in the sixteenth century inaugurated a 
movement which bears the name of "Reformation" 
and caused a large and fearful defection from the 
Church of which he was a member, and to which the 
bulk of mankind adhered all through the centuries 
from its establishment by Jesus Christ. In treating of 
this historical character whose startling influence was 
exercised on his own country and on the world at 
large, we have no intention to wound the convictions 
and sensibilities of any in the community who may 
disagree with us. Our aim is to tell the truth about 
the standard-bearer of the Reformation, and of this 
no one should be afraid, for truth and virtue triumph 
by their own inherent beauty and power. The poet 
aptly sings : 

"Truth hath such a face and such a mien, 
As to be loved needs only to be seen." 

In dealing with Luther it is well to remember that 
students of history have given him such attention as 
has been accorded to few men of any age, and about 
fewer still have they expressed such widely divergent 
views. His friends insist that he was a model of virtue 
and possessed eminent qualities which in every way 
made him worthy of his position as a religious reformer, 
while his opponents openly denounce him and in- 
sist that in his own day he was known as a "trickster 
and a cheat," one whose titanic pride, unrestrained 
temper, and lack of personal dignity utterly unfitted 
him to reform the Church and the age. 

To his followers the name and memory of Luther 
are objects of religious veneration. They have for the 
last four centuries surrounded him with such an aura 
of flattery and pedantry, that he is looked upon as one 
of the glories of Germany, nay, the foremost figure in 
their Hall of Immortals. By dint of minatory itera- 
tion, his admirers have been brought to believe that 
"he is the precious gift of God to the nation." Lutheran 
writers from Mathesius to Kostlin have invariably filled 
the German mind with all that reverent love could 
conjure up for their hero's justification and exalta- 
tion. To call in question the powers of the Reformer 



Luther : His Friends and Opponents 



11 



or deny the divine mission of the Reformation was 
ever considered blasphemous and unpatriotic. 

The opponents of Luther, on the contrary, stoutly 
maintain that his greatness was taken on trust and that 
the writers alluded to in the preceding paragraph have 
invariably, with a fatuous blindness mistaken for 
patriotism, fed and nourished the German mind, not 
on the real Luther, but on a Luther glossed over and 
toned down with respectful admiration and conjured 
under the influence of partisan-colored traditions in- 
tended to prevent him from being catalogued in his 
proper page in the world's history. Reverential ten- 
derness keyed to its highest pitch cannot, however, 
they claim, efface the clearly etched lineaments of the 
man of flesh and blood, the man of moods and im- 
pulses, of angularities and idiosyncracies which dom- 
inated his career and singled him out as a destructive 
genius unfitted to carry out any kind of reformation 
either in Church or State. 

In discussing Luther and his religious movement 
we feel at liberty to say that many, both in the ranks 
of his friends and of his opponents, have perhaps 
at times indulged in too great a display of feeling 
and exaggeration. It would help considerably to cool 
down the bitterness aroused among all parties did they 
honestly endeavor to discover for themselves the find- 
ings and conclusions of non-partisan writers on the 
delicate but interesting question. Wiser council 
and juster appreciation would inevitably reward the 
searchers after truth, the whole truth and nothing but 
the truth. Of these unbiased writers, many of whom 
are Protestants, there is no scarcity. They have been 
delving into the pages of history to find out the real 
Luther and they have not be#n afraid to tell in the in- 
terest of truth what sort of a man he actually was. 
These scholarly and reliable authors assert that Luther 
unquestionably possessed certain elements of greatness. 
They admit that he was a tireless worker, a forceful 
writer, a powerful preacher, and an incomparable 
master of the German language. They credit him with 
a keen knowledge of human nature and of the trend of 



12 The Facts About Luther 



the world of his day. They allege, moreover, that he was 
capable of taking advantage of everything that favored 
his schemes of yoking to his own chariot all the forces 
that were then at work to injure and oppose the ancient 
and time-honored religion of Catholics. But whatever 
else of praise these writers bestow on the man, it is 
equally clear and beyond question that they are all 
agreed in declaring that Luther possessed a violent, 
despotic and uncontrolled nature. Many of these 
writers, although Protestants and not friendly to the 
Catholic Church, have not been afraid to tell their co- 
religionists that the rights Luther assumed to himself 
in the matter of liberty of conscience, he unhesitatingly 
and imperiously denied to all who differed from him, 
as many specific cases overwhelmingly confirm. His 
will and his alone, they declare, he dogmatically set up 
as the only standard he wished to be recognized, fol- 
lowed, and obeyed. In their historical investigations 
they discovered many other shortcomings in the char- 
acter of the man unbecoming in one who claimed to 
be a reformer, and in their love of truth and real 
scholarship they have honestly acknowledged that 
there was something titanic, unnatural and diabolical 
in the founder of Protestantism. 

One of these fearless writers was the Protestant 
Professor Seeberg of Berlin. He was no friend of 
the Catholic Church, but his deep study of the man 
and his movement forced him to say: "Luther strode 
through his century like a demon crushing under his 
feet what a thousand years had venerated." The same 
author further remarks: "In him dwelt The Super- 
human/ or, in Neitzsche's Philosophy, the 'Ueber- 
mensch/ who dwells 'beyond moral good and evil/ " 

In November 1883 the English Protestant Bishop 
Bewick applied to Luther the epithets "foul-mouthed" 
and "scurrilous." 

In the December "Century" issued in 1900, Augus- 
tine Birrell, a distinguished English Protestant writer, 
declared that "Luther was not an ideal sponsor of a 
new religion; he was a master of billingsgate and the 
least saintly of men. At times, in reading Luther, one 



Luther: His Friends and Opponents 13 

is drawn to say to him what Herrick so frankly says 
of himself: 

'Luther, thou art too coarse to love/ 
"Had Luther been a brave soldier of fortune his 
coarseness might have passed for a sign of the times ; 
but one likes leaders of religion to be religious ; and it 
is hard to reconcile coarseness and self-will, two lead- 
ing notes of Luther's character, with even rudimentary 
religion. To want to be your own pope is a sign of the 
heresiarch, not of the Christian." 

To the testimony of Professor Seeberg and Mr. 
Birrell we desire to add another illustration of the 
change which has come over the minds of men regard- 
ing the German reformer. Licentiate Braun, in a con- 
tribution written for the "Evangelische Kirchenzeit- 
ung," March 30, 1913, p. 195, tells in all honesty and 
straight-forwardness, how with strips from the skin 
of his own co-religionists Protestant theologians have 
pieced together not a fictitious, but a genuinely reliable 
account of the life of Luther. This able Protestant 
theologian writes as follows: 

"How small the Reformer has become according to 
the Luther studies of our own Protestant investigators ! 
How his merits have shrivelled up ! We believed that 
we owed to him the spirit of toleration and liberty of 
conscience. Not in the least! We recognized in his 
translation of the Bible a masterpiece stamped with the 
impress of originality — we may be happy now if it is 
not plainly called a 'plagiarism !' We venerated in him 
the father of the popular school system — a purely 
'fictitious greatness' which we have no right to claim 
for him! We imagined that we found in Luther's 
words splendid suggestions for a rational treatment of 
poverty and that a return to him would bring us back 
to the true principles of charity — but the laurels do 
not belong to him, they must be conceded to the Cath- 
olic Church ! We were delighted to be assured that this 
great man possessed an insight into national economics 
marvelous for his day — but 'unbiased' investigation 
forces the confession that there were many indications 
of retrogressive tendencies in his economic views !" 



14 The Facts About Luther 



"Did we not conceive of Luther as the founder of 
the modern State ? Yet in all that he said upon this 
subject there was nothing of any value which was at 
all new ; as for the rest, by making the king an 'abso- 
lute Patriarch' he did not in the least improve upon the 
coercive measures employed by the theocracy of the 
Middle Ages." 

"Just think of it, then, all these conclusions come to 
us from the pen of Protestant theologians ! Reliable 
historians give book and page for them. What is still 
more amazing, all these Protestant historians continue 
to speak of Luther in tones of admiration, in spite of 
the admissions which a 'love of truth' compels them 
to make. Looking upon the 'results' of their work thus 
gathered together, we cannot help asking the question : 
What, then, remains of Luther?" 

This question, remember, is put, not by a Catholic, 
but by an eminent Protestant theologian. It is an im- 
portant question and deserves serious consideration. 
Who will answer it? The bigot and the preacher of 
"The Gospel of Hate" resent the question and like all 
enemies of truth they refuse to give it consideration. 
They hate the light and close their eyes to its illumina- 
tion. Many of them hate truth as a business. Their 
books and their lectures bring them reputation or 
money. Like Judas, they ask, "'What will you give 
me?" For a price the low, the vile, the false feed the 
fires that burn in the hearts of certain fanatics. Unlike 
these are the Seebergs, the Birrells and the Brauns. 
They are not afraid of the truth. They sought it with 
unbiased minds and once they discovered it they boldly 
communicated their findings to the world. Ask them 
the question : Who and what Luther really was, and 
their answer is straight-forward, direct and unhesitat- 
ing. They tell that nothing remains but an unpleasant 
memory of the man who divided the Church of God, 
and who, destitute of constructive genius, depraved in 
manners and in speech, falsely posed as a reformer 
sent by God. The investigations they made in the field 
of reliable history convinced them that the father of 
Protestantism appeared to fill the world with light, but 



Luther: His Friends and Opponents 15 

it was only the light of a passing meteor consuming 
and destroying' itself in its fall. To the enemies of 
truth these scholarly researches are most embarrassing 
and disappointing. As a distinguished writer puts it, 
"they pluck jewel after jewel from Luther's crown 
and make the praises chanted to him by the ranters o£ 
all times sound hollow in honest ears attuned to truth/' 
All impartial history proclaims that Luther had very 
fe\y, if any, of the qualifications that men naturally 
expect to find in one who poses as a religious reformer. 
The "Man of God," "the supernatural spirit," in which 
role he is represented by partisan writers, Luther was 
only in romance and myth. He attempted reformation 
and ended in deformation. Unfitted for the work he 
had outlined for himself, his ungovernable transports, 
riotous proceedings, angry conflicts and intemperate 
controversies frustrated his designs at every turn. 
His teaching, like his behavior, was full of inconsist- 
encies, and his contempt of all the accepted forms of 
human right and of all authority, human and divine, 
could not but result in lamentable disaster. His wild 
pronouncements wrecked Germany, wrecked her intel- 
lectually, morally, politically. The havoc wrought di- 
rectly or indirectly by him is almost without example 
in history. The outcome in the century following was 
that the nation became a mere geographical term and 
was thrown back two hundred years in development, 
in culture and progress. History presents no apology 
for the unbridled jealousy, fierce antagonism, and un- 
remitting opposition that marked the^- career of this 
man toward the Church of his forefathers. JHe was a 
revolutionist, not a reformer. The true reformer re- 
stores society to its primitive purity; the revolutionist 
violently upsets the constitution of society, putting 
something else in its place. While pretending to reform, 
he wrote and preached not for but against good works, 
and the novel teaching was eagerly accepted by the 
unthinking and bore those awful fruits of which the 
historians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
have painted the sorrowful picture. He rent asunder 
-4;he unity of the Church till, alongside of the one true 



16 



The Facts About Luther 



Church, there have arisen hundreds of warring sects ; 
nay, there are those who extol him as the founder of 
a religion, forgetting that this is his greatest shame, 
for, if he founded a religion it is not the Christian re- 
ligion established by Christ fifteen hundred years be- 
fore. No wonder he went down in ignominious defeat 
and that the Church he unnecessarily attacked and 
relentlessly endeavored to destroy remained as the 
central figure of all Christendom to proclaim alike to 
the humblest peasant and the greatest savant its Divine 
mission and heavenly authority to teach men the ways 
of eternal life. 

All this may sound very strange, and may, perhaps, 
shock a great many non-Catholics ; but they must 
kindly remember that they were taught that the subject 
under consideration had but one side, and that inher- 
ited prejudices prevented them from examining the 
facts and finding the truth they really love. The light 
they needed was kept from them and they were in- 
nocently led to believe that Luther was justified in his 
defection from the Church he once loved and de- 
fended, but which he afterwards disgraced by a notori- 
ously wicked and scandalous life. They heard him 
praised for what ignorant men called his '''robust 
Christianity/ 5 which was akin to Judas's betryal of the 
Master, and they believed this when they lauded him 
as an "apostle of liberty" in spite of the fact, as history 
shows, that he was one of the most intolerant of men. 
They have heard the anti-Catholic of every shade of 
character rake-up the muck of history, vilify the clergy, 
hold up nuns as the wickedest of women, exploit the 
Pope as "Anti-Christ" and the ''Man of Sin"; resort, 
in a word, to every known means of ridicule and mis- 
representation to depict the spotless Spouse of Christ 
as the "great harlot of the Apocalypse/'' "the mother of 
fornications and the abominations of the earth." They 
have heard the wild, monstrous and even impossible 
statements of the lying and slanderous in the com- 
munity, whose only aim is to advance the nefarious 
and diabolical work of inflaming the passions of the 
rabble and to keep alive the blind, prejudiced, and irra- 



Luther: His Friends and Opponents 17 

tional discrimination against everything Catholic. The 
pity of it all is, that, in this day of enlightenment, many 
who would be ashamed to listen to professional char- 
latans in any other avocation of life, will think that 
they are doing a "service to God" by giving a willing 
ear and swallowing down without a qualm the silly, 
senseless, and unwarranted reproaches which unscru- 
pulous haranguers, paid hirelings, and vile calumni- 
ators unblushingly and without the vestige of proof 
urge against the religion which Christ established for 
all time till the consummation of the world, and which 
history tells has civilized the peoples and the nations. 

But, whilst this is all true, we feel that the most 
generous allowance must be made for the Church's 
enemies and their deluded followers. The fact is they 
cannot help their antagonism and distrust, for they 
have been brought up from infancy to loathe the Cath- 
olic Church, whose history, they were made to believe 
by their false teachers, was distinguished for nothing 
save bloodshed, crime, and fraud. Their anti-Catholic 
views and prejudices and hostilities had their origin in 
the so-called Reformation period, and since that time 
all Protestant "mankind descending by ordinary genera- 
tion" have come into the world with a mentality biased, 
perverted, and prejudiced. They and their fathers 
have been steeped and nurtured in opposition, and in 
most cases without meaning to be unjust they feel in- 
stinctively a strong and profound antipathy to every- 
thing that savors of Catholicity. Ministers and lec- 
turers and tracts, every channel of propagating error, 
bigotry, and misrepresentation, are used to preserve, 
circulate and keep alive popular hatred and distrust of 
the one true Church of Christ which, all who have any 
sense should know, is indestructible. How men in the 
possession of their wits can engage in the useless and 
vain task of attempting to displace and destroy a God- 
founded religion, established for all time and for all 
peoples, surpasses all understanding. The fact never- 
theless remains that many, unfortunately for them- 
selves, are obsessed with an insane hatred of Catholi- 
cism and in the exuberance of an enthusiasm akin 



18 



The Facts About Luther 



to that of a Celsus, a Porphyry, and a Julian, they 
treat the public to a campaign of abuse and vilification 
of the Church which is a disgrace to themselves and a 
violation of all Christian teaching. All these and many 
other influences at work in the world to destroy true 
Christianity tend to bind the opponents of the Church 
with iron bonds to their present inherited convictions, 
and hence they hate the Church because they do not 
know her in all her beauty and truthfulness. How 
could it be otherwise with them ? Would we ourselves 
have been any better under the same conditions ? 

Catholics expect the Church, which Christ estab- 
lished and organized for all time, to be misunderstood, 
maligned, ill-treated, pursued, persecuted, hated by the 
world. Her founder put the mark of the Cross on her 
when He said : "If they have persecuted Me, they will 
also persecute you" (St. John xv, 20). In every 
age the Catholic Church, which is the only one of the 
vast number of pretending claimants to Divine origin 
of which Christ's prediction is true, has had to suffer 
persecution from the enemies of order and truth, who, 
if they could, would wipe her from the face of the 
earth. This, however, they have not been able to ac- 
complish, nor will they be able at any future time, for 
God ordained the Church to remain forever in her 
integrity, clothed with all the attributes He gave her in 
the beginning. Divinity stamped indestructibility upon 
the brow of the Church, and though destined to be 
assailed always she will never be overcome by her 
enemies. Catholics know that Christ watches over the 
survival of the Church, and hence, in this day when 
the vast army of the ignorant and the rebellious rise 
up to check her development- and stop her progress, 
they fear not, happen what will, for they are confident 
that, as the sun will rise to-morrow and the next day 
and so on to the end of the world, so will the Master 
ever fulfill His promise concerning the Church, pre- 
serving her amid storm and sunshine till time is no 
more. When will the enemy realize that it is too late 
in the day to overthrow the Church which has stood 



Luther: His Friends and Opponents 19 

the test of centuries and which has been accepted, 
loved and admired by the best minds of all the ages ? 

Catholics naturally feel indignant at the vilification, 
abuse and misrepresentation to which their ancient and 
world-wide religion is constantly subjected, but they 
are charitable and lenient in their judgment towards 
all who wage war against them. They are considerate 
with their opponents and persecutors because they 
realize that these are victims of a long standing and in- 
herited prejudice, intensified by a lack of knowledge of 
what the Catholic Church really upholds and teaches. 
Even as the Church's Founder prayed the Heavenly 
Father to forgive those who nailed Him to the cross 
because they knew not what they did, so do His fol- 
lowers, with malice to none but with charity to all, 
pray for those who oppose the spread of the Kingdom 
of God on earth because they do not realize to the full 
that, in despising the Church, they despise Him who 
founded her to be the light of the world. Most of 
the Church's enemies are to be greatly pitied, for they 
have never been taught the significant lesson that the 
man-made system of religion they hold or adhere to 
is fafse, an offense and an apostacy in the eyes of God, 
who despises heresy and Who warned His followers 
to be on guard against every teacher not commissioned 
by Him to announce Divine truth. Of all this they are 
unaware. They know nothing of the Church they 
malign, abuse and vilify. They are ignorant of her 
history, of her organization, of her constitution, of her 
teaching, of her mission and her place in the world. 
They know her not, and many of them, otherwise 
honest but nurtured in opposition, are led to hate what 
with divine light they would come to admire, love, 
and embrace. 

The general ignorance that prevails in regard to the 
Catholic Church is most regrettable. This ignorance, 
however, is only surpassed by the lack of knowledge 
manifested by the maligners of the Catholic Church 
regarding their own peculiar system of belief. They 
are ever ready to criticise the Catholic Church, of which 
they know little or nothing, and yet when they are 



20 The Facts About Luther 



asked to give an intelligent account of their own sys- 
tem of belief they are unable to reply in such a way 
as to appeal to the honest searcher after truth. Ask 
some of the preachers of the "Gospel of Hate" to de- 
scribe their own religion, presuming, of course, that 
they have a religion. Ask them to give you the real 
story of the origin of the word and the meaning of the 
system embodied in the term "Protestantism." Ask 
them to tell you -what was there in the teaching of 
Luther that demanded his expulsion from the Catholic 
Church. Ask them to tell you of the pride of intellect N 
which caused Luther to refuse to hear and submit to 
the Church of Jesus Christ. Ask them by what author- 
ity did an ex-communicated man like Luther establish 
a system of religion in opposition to the one organized 
by Christ and with which He said "He would remain 
all days even to the consummation of the world." Ask 
them to tell you the difference between Christ's teach- 
ing and that of Luther. Ask them to tell you what 
was Luther's conception of religion, why did he decry 
the necessity of good works and declare it to be the 
right of every man to interpret the Scriptures accord- 
ing to his own individual conception. Ask them to tell 
you why did Luther one day proclaim the binding force 
of the Commandments and the next declare they were 
not obligatory on Christian observance. Ask them to 
tell you by what authority did Luther approve of 
adultery, favor concubinage and sanction the bigamy 
of Philip of Hesse. Ask them to tell you why Luther 
advocated freedom of conscience and at the same time 
compelled all to submit to his will and dictation. Ask 
them is the Protestantism of to-day the same as Luther 
fathered and what are the changes from the original 
teachings it has undergone during the last four hun- 
dred years. Ask them to tell you of the varied exist- 
ence and constantly shifting position of Protestantism, 
to give you the names of its many contending bodies 
which have been tossed about by every wind of relig- 
ious speculation and which are still subject to ever- 
lasting drifting. Ask them to point out to you the 
difference noticeable between the old and the new 



Luther: His Friends and Opponents 21 

Protestantism. Ask them could they certify that the 
original opinions of the sect are held in respect in 
modern times. Ask them would they affirm that the 
father of Protestantism, were he in their midst to-day, 
set the seal of his approbation on the myriad variations 
and evolutions which have affected his own false and 
individualistic doctrinal expositions. Ask them how 
does all this fit in with the teaching of St. Paul, the 
greatest of the Church's converts, who, putting the 
query, Is Christ divided ? replied in the ever memorable 
words: "One faith, one baptism, one Lord, and one 
Master of all." 

These questions are pertinent and in all fairness 
they should be answered by those who make it a busi- 
ness to wage war on the Mother Church. If the ene- 
mies of the Church are honest, God-fearing men they 
will not shirk their bounden duty in a matter so grave 
and important. Until they have settled the disorders 
and contentions everywhere existing in their own Pro- 
testant households, we think they should in charity, 
cease their attacks on the Church which, as the ages 
have testified, cannot be displaced or destroyed. In 
the meantime, let them honestly probe the issue to its 
depths and in prayer and study seek the truth that 
frees, vivifies, and saves. Earnest and sincere investi- 
gation will make it surprisingly evident that only the 
shell of Protestantism remains. All honest inquiry 
will show that its origin is of the earth and decline it 
must. The name it bears designates it as a human 
institution and history proves that it is nothing more. 
From its thousands of deluded followers in the six- 
teenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we see 
to-day but a handful left to testify to its failure. The 
newspapers told us recently that the exodus of Prus- 
sians from the ranks of the State Church is wholesale 
and that a similar defection is daily going on in Eng- 
land and in this country. Protestantism, as a system 
of religion, is undeniably dying out. It has unfortu- 
nately prepared the way for the monster Agnosticism 
or Rationalism which stares us to-day in all its horrible 
shapes and forms. 



22 



The Facts About Luther 



But to return to Luther. What about him? What 
do the vast bulk of non-Catholics know about the man 
who reviled and hated and cursed the Church of his 
fathers more than any other mortal ever has done? 
Must not the great majority of our separated brethren 
admit they know absolutely nothing at first hand about 
the man? Beyond his name and his defection from 
the Mother Church they are in ignorance of his false 
doctrinal views and depraved manner of life. This 
side of his work and character is carefully concealed 
from their vision, and, with a childlike innocence that 
disarnis wrath, they believe their leaders and guides in 
religion who know the man no better than themselves 
when in pulpit and on platform they hold him up to 
view wreathed in a halo of glory and sanctity, and 
proclaim him a ''Reformer of Christ's Church/' "an 
apostle of liberty," "'an entightener of the people," "a 
destroyer of the Papacy," etc., etc. Most Protestants 
do not study the career and work of their hero inde- 
pendently for themselves, nor determine to find out 
the truth from the proper sources, and, as might be 
expected, it is easy for them, congenial and pleasant, 
to believe their false guides when they heap unmerited 
titles on the man, who more than any before or since 
his day was what St. Paul designates a "lawless one" 
and a contemner of constituted authority. * Did they 
read reliable historians and learn something of his 
perverse principles, false teaching, unscrupulous men- 
dacity, coarse and indecent language, they would not 
for long hold his memory in honor and continue their 
connection with the false system of religion which he 
founded without either warrant or authority. 

It is no difficult matter, as all educated Protestants 
know, to show that the reformation Luther contem- 
plated was a very strange one, for according to the 
open avowal of its author it led to the utter demoraliza- 
tion of its followers. Almost from the beginning of 
his movement he was disgusted on account of the little 
change for the better his preachments wrought in the 
lives of his adherents and with each succeeding year, 
he expressed his disappointment in the bitterest terms. 



Luther : His Friends and Opponents 



23 



"Unfortunately," he says, "it is our daily experience, 
that now under the Gospel (his) the people entertain 
greater and bitterer hatred and envy and are worse 
with their avarice and money-grabbing than before 
under the Papacy." (Walch XIII, 2195.) /The 
people feel they are free from the bonds and fetters 
of the Pope, but now they want to get rid also of the 
Gospel and of all the laws of God." (Walch XIV, 195.) 
"Everybody thinks that Christian liberty and licen- 
tiousness of the flesh are one and the same thing, as if 
now everybody was allowed to do what he wants." 
(Tischr. 1, 180.) "Townsfolk and peasants, men and 
women, children and servants, princes, magistrates and 
subjects, are all going to the devil." (Erl. 14, 389.) 
"If we succeed in expelling one devil, he immediately is 
replaced by seven others who are much worse. We 
can then expect that after having driven away the 
monks, we shall see arise a race seven times worse 
than the former." (Erl. XXXVI, 411.) "Avarice, 
usury, debauchery, drunkenness, blasphemy, lying and 
cheating are far more prevalent now than they were 
under the Papacy. This state of morals brings general 
discredit on the Gospel and its preachers, as th£ people 
say, if this Gospel were true, the persons professing it 
would be more pious." (Erl. I, 192.) 

We could fill a large volume with Luther's words 
describing the frightful corruption that followed upon 
the announcement of his new gospel, but we have given 
enough for the present to show that the so-called re- 
former was not unaware of the practical effect on the 
masses in his own day of his wild pronouncements. 
From his own lips, then, we learn of the utter failure 
of his so-called reformation movement. What else 
might he expect? Did he not sow the wind? Why 
should he not reap the whirlwind? Wherein, then, 
lies a reason to honor this destructive genius, and why 
should men of sense continue to entrust the interests 
of their immortal souls to his self-assumed leadership ? 

It is, moreover, no difficult matter, as all well in- 
formed Protestants know, to demonstrate that Luther, 



24 The Facts About Luther 



German as he was to the core, in speaking of his native 
land used the vilest and most brutal language. Many 
know in a general way that Luther was in the habit of 
using rather hard words, to put it mildly, but few know 
how far he was capable of going. He was reckless to the 
border of irresponsible rashness, blunt to the exclusion 
of every qualm of delicacy, audacious to the scorn of 
every magnanimous restraint, coarse beyond the power 
of reproducible Anglo-Saxon and lubricous to a 
degree that pales Rabelaisian foulness. His unbridled 
tongue did not spare even his own country and his own 
people. In speech and in writing he unblushingly de- 
scribed the Teutonic race as "brutes and pigs," and he 
called the nation "a bestial race," "a sow," "a de- 
bauched people," "given over to all kinds of vice." 
Here are some of his sayings: "We profligate Ger- 
mans are abominable hogs." "You pigs, hounds, ran- 
ters, you irrational asses!" "Our German nation are 
a wild, savage nation, half devils, half men." (Walch 
XX, 1014, 1015, 1633.) In many pages of his writ- 
ings he complains that "the German people are seven 
times worse since they embraced the Reformation." 
When one ponders over the description Luther gives 
of his native land and its people it is difficult to believe 
that there existed in his soul the faintest spark of 
patriotism or love of country. Compare his language 
with that of St. Paul, who was a real reformer,^ and 
note the difference. This great convert and distinguished 
Apostle, speaking of those He won to Christ, calls 
them his "dearly beloved brethren" and then proclaims 
them "my joy and my crown." (Phil, iv, 1.) On an- 
other occasion, referring to the fruits of his apostolic 
labors, he Says to the Catholics of Thessalonica : "You 
became followers of us and of the Lord ... so that you 
were made a pattern to all that believe in Macedonia 
and in Achaja." (1. Thess. 1, 6, 7.) Which of these, 
think you, was the true patriot and the true reformer? 

When our non-Catholic brethren thoroughly con- 
sider the vile, intemperate and disgusting language 
vjfiich was habitual with Luther and weigh well the 



Luther: His Friends and Opponents 25 

opprobrious names he hurled at the race of his fore- 
fathers, how in all honesty can they give a willing ear 
to the praise of one so coarse and brutal and continue 
their association with a sect which its own founder, 
consumed with pride and hate and despair, pronounced 
a lamentable failure? 

There are many strict non-Catholics to-day, who 
are, as a rule, honest, and moral people. God forbid 
that we should offend or cause the slightest pain to 
them, but in the interest of truth we beg leave to re- 
mind them that it is high time for them to know that 
they have lived as regards Luther too long on legends 
and do not realize what sort of man he was. Luther 
when living spared not Catholicity nor the Papacy. 
To-day many of his adherents are close imitators of 
his violence and opposition. We must be pardoned 
for mildly but fearlessly resenting the vilification and 
misrepresentation to which the Mother Church has for 
four hundred years been unnecessarily subjected. 
Luther was the cause of it all and ignorance among 
the rank and file of his sympathizers has played a 
most important part in perpetuating opposition to the 
one true Church of Christ. 

To promote charity and bring about a better under- 
standing among all, it behooves every serious man to 
know this character for what he was and to learn 
that he has absolutely no claim to any consideration 
as a heaven-commissioned agent, as even an ordinary 
"reformer" or "spiritual leader," or as in any respect 
a man above and ahead of the frailties of his age. 
Non-Catholics should in all fairness read carefully for 
themselves the teachings of Luther, when their eyes 
will be opened to the' true state of things and they will 
cease their opposition to the Church against which as 
yet the gates of hell have not been able to prevail. 
When the minds of men are opened to the truth, we 
assure them that if there be any indignation to be 
vented, it will not be spent on the Catholic Church, but ( 
upon the man who contemned the authoritative guid- 
ance of the religion of their forefathers. 



26 



The Facts About Luther 



To help to clear the way for a better understanding 
of differences we intend in this little work fairly and 
honestly to disclose some of the more important 
facts in the religious schism which, begun by Luther, 
has proved the most baneful event yet known in 
man's history. We will then write about Luther, 
not against him. We will quote his own words. If 
the result is not favorable to him, the fault will not be 
ours. We wish to assure our readers that we will not 
allude to half the disparaging things of the so-called 
Reformation and the German people that were uttered 
and written by the apostate Saxon monk himself. We 
hope none of our readers will shut their eyes to the 
truth and that we may be of service to the sincere and 
earnest to help them to discover before it is too late 
the Church wherein their forefathers found rest, peace, 
and salvation. That Church is in our midst to-day and 
may easily be discovered. She stands as of old on the 
certainty of the Divine veracity and can no more be 
shaken than the Throne of God itself. Men like 
Luther, Zwingle, Calvin and others appeared upon the 
field of battle to wage war against this Church, but 
where are they now; where are their congregations; 
where are their sanctuaries? Who believes their doc- 
trines? Like the fragments of a thousand barks richly 
laden with intellect and learning, all man-made relig- 
ions are now scattered on the shores of error and 
delusion, while the Church of Truth still rides the waves 
in hope, in strength, and in security. God is with her 
and she cannot perish. Her enemies then might reflect 
with profit on what St. John says in his second general 
Epistle : "Whosoever revolteth and hath not the doc- 
trine of Christ, hath not God." 

The Catholic Church alone has that doctrine which 
unites men with God. She was organized for the ex- 
press purpose to teach and preserve all things what- 
soever Christ, her Founder, had commanded for the 
instruction and salvation of mankind to the end of the 
world. She is not man's work. She is Christ's work. 
She is His Spouse, His mystical body, as St. Paul tells 



Luther: His Friends and Opponents 27 

us. It is through her that He continues to communi- 
cate His doctrine to men, that He causes them to live 
a' life of grace, and leads them to their eternal happi- 
ness. He founded her that through her He may apply 
to mankind the fruits of His Redemption to the end 
of time. Hence it follows that no one who through 
his own fault dies out of the Church will obtain salva- 
tion. "No one/' says St. Augustine, "can be saved 
who has not Christ for his head and no one can have 
Christ for his head who does not belong to His body, 
the Church." These words were spoken long before 
Luther and his companions in revolt appeared on the 
scene, and they are as true to-day as when they were 
first uttered. The command of Christ to hear the 
Church which is the chief work of His power, His 
wisdom and His love for mankind, is imperative and 
cannot be ignored without suffering exclusion from 
the inheritance of the children of God. The voice of 
the Good Shepherd and not that of the hireling must 
be heard, if salvation is to be secured. Those who 
refuse to receive the true Christian doctrine, and to 
enter the Church, which preaches that doctrine in its 
entirety, should ponder well the words of St. Paul 
when he says, "And though we, or an angel from 
heaven, preach a Gospel to you, besides that which we 
have preached to you, let him be anathema. If anyone 
preach to you a Gospel besides that which you have 
received, let him be anathema." And again in his 
Epistle to Titus he says : "A man that is a heretic after 
the first and second admonition, avoid. Knowing that 
he, that is such a one, is subverted, and sinneth, being 
condemned by his own judgment." 

Few men nowadays hate the Church as fiercely and 
intensely as St. Paul did before the grace of God 
touched his heart and led him into her bosom. That 
same grace is ever ready to be imparted to the humble, 
sincere, earnest inquirer after Divine truth. No pre- 
text, however specious, should deter men from acquir- 
ing a full and connected knowledge of God's revela- 
tion and enjoying that profound peace which springs 



28 The Facts About Luther 



from the conscious possession of the whole, complete, 
and fixed truth as it is in Christ Jesus and in His 
Church. The distorted, ever-varying, and changeable 
man-made religions of Luther, Calvin, Henry VIII, 
Knox, Fox, Wesley, Smith, Dowie, Eddy, and innu- 
merable others, can never take the place of the Cath- 
olic Church established by God Incarnate in Christ. 
In it alone is infallible truth, true life, and certain 
salvation. In asking men, who are "tossed to and fro 
by ever} 7 ' wind of doctrine," to exchange their opinions 
for certitude, their dissensions for unity, their errors 
for truth, the Church is only fulfilling her Divine mis- 
sion and endeavoring to realize the prayer of her 
Founder that there may be but one faith, one baptism 
and one shepherd of souls. Fail not, then, we beseech 
you, to listen to her voice, investigate her teachings 
and accept her authority here and now, so that you 
may enjoy, "the peace that passeth all understanding" 
and partake of the Bread of Life. 

It is certainly high time to discern the tactics of 
the wolves in sheep's clothing and have sense and in- 
tellect enough to see the sham and the fraud of men- 
made brands of religion with their multitudinous divi- 
sions, their contradictions, and their lies. The slime- 
vending, mud-slinging, vile detractors may try to hide 
the sham and the fraud of their unstable beliefs by 
well-planned and shameless schemes of attack on the 
Spouse of Christ, but the intelligent in the community, 
exercising sound judgment and viewing the contra- 
dictions and divisions of the enemy from the stand- 
point of truth, which they realize can never contradict 
itself, consider their efforts as a huge joke in presence 
of the Divinely established, heaven-united Church of 
all ages and of all peoples. Bigots come and go; they 
make a great splurge and bluster temporarily with 
their campaigns of calumny and vilification, but the 
Catholic Church, because she is the One established by 
Jesus Christ, continues on in her heavenly mission in 
spite of the puny weaklings who endeavor to stop her 
progress. The Mother Church counts not her numbers 



Luther : His Friends and Opponents 29 

by men, but by time alone. She has seen centuries 
and will see more, not changing one jot in the future, 
but still standing and teaching as she does to-day. She 
will live to bury all her misguided enemies. She is of 
God and cannot be downed or displaced by men no 
matter what may be their numbers, their influence, or 
their power. " Against her," Christ declared, "the 
gates of hell shall never prevail. ,, 



CHAPTER II. 



Luther Before His Defection. 

THE subject of these papers was born at Eisleben, 
in Germany, on the night of the ioth of Novem- 
ber, 1483, about forty-five years after Guttenberg in- 
vented the printing press, and nine years before Co- 
lumbus discovered America. At one end of a narrow 
street in this little town noted for its high-roofed, red- 
tiled houses, or as Barbour described it, "at a meeting 
of three streets, with a little garden beside it, as became 
the place they say it was — an inn — stands the house 
where Luther was born. Over the door there is a head 
of him in stone with a commemorative inscription 
carved round it. You enter the first room to the left 
and stand where he was born. It is a largish room, 
day and night room it was, one would think, in the inn 
time." The old house was partly destroyed by fire and 
rebuilt in the seventeenth century. Here in Eisleben 
Luther first saw the light of day and here he came to 
close his earthly career, his demise occuring February 
18, 1546. Visitors to the little town are shown both 
house of birth and house of death. 

On the day following the birth of the little stranger, 
he was brought to St. Peter's Church, where he was 
baptized and given the name of Martin in honor of the 
saint whose feast it was. The font at which the 
waters of baptism were poured on his head to make 
him a Christian is still preserved and may be inspected 
by the visitor. His father was named John Liider, 
which was later on changed to Luther, and his mother 
Margaret Ziegler. The father came of peasant stock, 
and the mother was of the burgher class from the 
neighboring town of Eisenach, and as such held a 
higher rank in the community than her husband. Some 
writers have endeavored to give the parents a noble 
origin, but the claim cannot be sustained. Luther said 
to Melanchthon in after years : "I am a peasant's son* 



Luther Before His Defection 31 



My father, my grandfather, all my ancestors were 
genuine peasants. My father was a poor miner. ,, At 
times, when he referred to his humble origin, he de- 
clared with much force that "there is as little sense in 
boasting of one's ancestry as in the devil priding him- 
self on his angelic lineage." Both parents were, ac- 
cording to the Swiss Kessler, "spare, short and dark 
complexioned." The father was a rugged, stern, iras- 
cible character and the mother, according to Melanch- 
thon, was conspicuous for "modesty, the fear of God 
and prayerfulness." They were a sturdy couple, am- 
bitious for their own and their children's advancement, 
and lived to a ripe old age. 

The original home of the Luther family was in 
Morha, a little township situated on the northwest 
corner of the Thuringian Forest and a few miles to 
the south of Eisenach. In this district a large number 
of the inhabitants bore the name of Luther. As late as 
1901, six families still belonged to the Luthers. Morha 
is up to the present a tiny hamlet with about six hun- 
dred inhabitants. It has not changed much in the pro- 
cess of time. In the olden days it was so unimportant 
as not to merit mention on the map. Then it consisted 
of a small collection of seventy or eighty detached 
dwellings of a primitive character and mostly of ad- 
joining farm yards. With the exception of a solitary 
carpenter and shoemaker, both of whom seldom had 
occasion to ply their trades, the few hundred inhabit- 
ants were mostly wood cutters, farmers and workers 
in the slate mines of the district. In this town Luther's 
father, like many of his neighbors, owned and cul- 
tivated a small farm. He worked and struggled against 
great odds to eke out a frugal livelihood. The pros- 
pects for worldly advancement were far from encour- 
aging to his ambitious disposition, yet he loved the 
place because from time immemorial it was the home 
of his ancestors. He was not destined, however, to 
remain for long with his kith and kin. Shortly -*ter 
his marriage with Margaret Ziegler we find him abru^ 
ly abandoning his small holding in the little peas- 
ant township and hurriedly seeking a new home and a 



32 The Facts About Luther 



new occupation four score miles away in another 
hamlet where his first child was born. Ortmann, in 
a work which deals in a chronological study of the 
Luthers and which is not unknown to students, asks: 
"What could have been the cause which induced John 
Luther to take such a step ? To suddenly decamp with 
his wife, too, be it remembered, far advanced in preg- 
nancy, to quit and utterly abandon the place of his 
birth, the home of his childhood and the site of all his 
belongings ?" 

Luther's admirers have endeavored to answer the 
unpleasant question, but all the explanations made, 
and which did service for a time, rest on such a pre- 
carious basis as to be unworthy of scholarly accept- 
ance. That there was a cause, other than such as is 
ordinarily assigned, for John Luther's sudden depar- 
ture from Morha is certain, and substantiated by docu- 
f mentary evidence. Henry Mayhew, a man of dis- ■ 
! tinguished literary attainments and best known as one 
of the Mayhew brothers who founded London Punch, 
made Luther the subject of a close, careful, critical 
study. In_an interesting work • ublished in London he 
treats of the question under consideration and declares 
John Luthers departure from Morha was a "flight," 
and he further adds, "men do not fly from their homes 
except on occasions of the greatest urgency." 

'The simple fact, then," according to Mr. Mayhew, 
"would appear to be that John Luther — as Martin 
Michaelis tells us in his description of the mines and 
smelting houses at Kupf ersuhl, a work which was first 
published in the year 1702 — Martin's father, had, in a 
dispute stricken a herdsman dead to the earth, by 
means of a horse bridle, which he happened to have in 
his hand at the time and was thereupon forced to 
abscond from the officers of justice as hurriedly as he 
could." 

"This misfortune of John Luther/* Ortmann says, 
"lives still in the minds of the Morha peasantry. The 
villagers there tell you not only the same tale, but they 
show you the very spot — the field in which the tragedy 
occured." 



Luther Before His Defection 





33 



Mr. Mayhew made a special journey to Morha in 
the last century and spent two weeks there with the 
object of probing the correctness of Ortmann's state- 
ment. He was a staunch Protestant and an enthusi- 
astic admirer of Luther, but withal, honest, fearless 
and careful. With method in his design he made 
searching inquiries concerning the local tradition in all 
directions and questioned and cross-examined old and 
young in the locality. He found invariably every per- 
son knew the same story and all could point out the 
identical spot where the murder was committed. "All 
the Morha folk," he says, "had had the tale told them 
by their grandfathers and they had it from their grand- 
fathers before them." The story was so commonly 
and unquestionably accepted, that he was forced to 
admit its credibility. "Sum up all these matters/ 5 is 
his conclusion, "and a mass of evidence is cumulated 
upon which surely no twelve common jurymen in their 
common senses would hesitate to bring in a verdict of 
— Guilty." 

The charge of John Luther's homicide was not a 
recent tradition but a charge made in Luther's own 
lifetime. George Wicel, who in the estimation of the 
Reformer was "a very learned and capable man," first 
called Luther's father a homicide, and that at three 
several times, in 1535, 1537 and 1565, and, moreover, 
in public print. It is recorded that on one occasion 
Justus Jonas assailed the integrity of the father of 
Wicel. The later resented the charge as totally ir- 
relevant to the case under consideration, and declared 
that if such an argument possessed any validity, "he 
could call the father of your Luther a homicide." 
Luther and his friends never denied tjie statement. 
According to Karl Seidemann, an expert on Luther, 
"the testimony of Wicel may be taken as settling def- 
initely the constantly occuring dispute on the subject." 

Fr. Ganss in dealing with this question concludes a 
learned contribution to the American Catholic Quar- 
terly Review with an observation which is vitally 
germane to the subject. "This is, the wild passion of 
anger was an unextinguished and unmodified heritage 



34 The FXcts About Luther 



transmitted congenitally to the whole Luther family 
and this to such an extent that the Luther-zom (Luther 
rage) has attained the currency of a German collo- 
quialism. Collectively it is graphically summarized 
by the Saxon archivist Bruckner on the basis of arch- 
ival research and the official court dockets of Salzun- 
gen, the seat of the judicial district." "Morha," is the 
contention of this official, "has attained the reputation 
for its rough and brusque character, because in the 
leading groups of its relationships, especially in the 
Luther branch, it possessed a tough and unyielding 
metal, and accordingly allowed itself to be drawn to a 
condition of refractoriness and querulous self-defense. 
To the police treasury of Salzungen, Morha, with its 
rough-and-ready methods, was a welcome and rich 
source of revenue, for, as the police dockets show, the 
village was mulcted again and again for acts of vio- 
lence, which its inhabitants committed, now in political 
or church parties, now as individuals, and foremost 
among them the Luthers. The parish manifested so 
determined an opposition and obstinacy against the 
legal authorities, as well as parochial, as to culminate 
in the brutal act of shooting at the household of the 
pastor. The condition of the neighbors adjoining the 
town, whose ready resource to arms, knives, scythes, 
nightly brawls and public balsphemies, are often al- 
luded to, as also the fines imposed for their mis- 
demeanors. In these the Luther clan is mostly in- 
volved, for it carried on its feuds with others, strikes, 
wounds, resists and is ever ready at self -vindication 
and self-defense. Out of the gnarly wood of this re- 
lationship, consisting mostly of powerful, pugnacious 
farmers, assertive of their rights, Luther's father 
grew." (Archiv. fur Sachsische Geschichte III, 38.) 

"It will hardly be denied that this characterization 
on the whole applied to John Luther and that, more- 
over, on evidence well known and abstracting from the 
homicide charge." 

"And if we admit the leading laws of heredity, this 
may account for the fact," as Mayhew states it, "that 
Martin was a veritable chip of the hard old block," and 



Luther Before His Defection 35 



with reasons, no doubt crudely scientific but pictur- 
esquely apposite, he goes on to say : "If a gouty father 
or a consumptive mother, in the usual course of nature, 
beget a podagric or phthisic child, surely one with a 
temper as fiery as a blood-horse may be expected to 
cast a high-mettled: foal. It may account for that 
'terrible temper' of the Reformer, which was a dread 
to his antagonists, a shock to refined ears, a mortifica- 
tion to his friends, a sorrow to his intimates and an in- 
delible stain on his apologetics." 

The parents of Luther in the beginning of their mar- 
ried life were not blessed with much of the goods of 
this world. They had, however, a strong sense of their 
obligations toward their family and the courage to dis- 
charge them. Anxious for their own and their chil- 
dren's advancement, they worked together and toiled 
incessantly to provide food and clothing and education 
for their rising offspring. For years their means were 
scant enough and the struggle to meet the support of 
the household was both hard and grinding. Often the 
mother was reduced to the dire necessity of car- 
rying home the wood for the family fire, gathered 
from the neighboring pine forest, on her own should- 
ers. In this home, like many before and since, there 
was unfortunately one great deficiency, more intoler- 
able than poverty, namely, the absence of the sweet 
joys of family life. Childish fun and frolic which be- 
get happiness and good cheer, found no encourage- 
ment in the Luther family circle. Home life was ex- 
acting, cold, dull and cheerless. The heads of the house 
took their parental responsibilities too seriously and 
interpreted them too rigorously. The father was stern, 
harsh, exacting, and, what is rather unusual, the mother 
was altogether too much given to inflict the severest 
corporal punishments. With them "the apple did not 
always lie beside the rod." They were altogether too 
strict and exacting. They believed in work and had no 
relish for innocent play and amusement. In the govern- 
ment of their children they exercised no discrimination 
or moderation. Too much severity ruled the household 
and as usual begot disastrous results. To this over- 



36 



The Facts About Luther 



strenuous discipline we may find to a certain degree 
the explanation of the development of that temper of 
unbending obstinacy for which their son was so re- 
markable not only in his earliest years, but throughout 
his whole life. Though he seems to have been very 
fond of his parents in after life and recalled how they 
pinched themselves to give him support and education, 
it appears from his own statement that they were ex- 
tremely exacting and punished him cruelly for the most 
trifling offenses. As examples of the harsh treatment 
to which he was subjected in his youth, he tells us that 
on one occasion his father, in a fit of uncontrollable 
rage, beat him so mercilessly that he became a fugitive 
from home and was on this account so "embittered 
against him that he had to win me to himself again." 
(Tischreden, Frankfort, 1567, fol. 314 a.) At another 
time, he says, "his mother in her inflexible rigor flogged 
him, until the blood flowed, on account of a worthless 
little nut." 

In school he met with the same severity that was 
meted out to him at home. The rule here also was that 
of the rod. The schoolmaster of that day was gener- 
ally a harsh disciplinarian and inspired a fear in pupils 
which was difficult to remove ever afterward. Speak- 
ing later of his school-day experience, Luther relates 
that he was beaten fifteen times in succession during 
one morning and, to the best of his knowledge, without 
much fault of his own. He, probably, brought the 
punishment on himself by insubordination and obsti- 
nacy. Whether there was exceptional provocation or 
not, the flogging only served to anger him and retard 
progress in study. Under this harsh treatment he 
learned, as he confesses, nothing. Even the customary 
religious training he received at the time does not seem 
to have raised his spirits or led to a free, more hopeful 
development of his spiritual life. In a fiery character, 
such as his, the cruel treatment to which he was 
subjected, both at home and in school, could only lay 
the foundation of that stubbornness which afterwards 
became one of the leading features of the man; natur- 
ally enough it could intimidate the violence of his dis- 



Luther Before His Defection 37 



position but could not remove it. "This severity/' he 
says later on, "shattered his nervous system for life/' 

When Martin was only six months old his parents 
left Eisleben and moved to Mans felt, a thriving, busy 
mining town. Here they hoped to obtain a fairer share 
of worldly success. At an early age, Martin was sent 
to a school in which the Ten Commandments, Child's 
Belief, The Lord's Prayer and the Latin Grammar of 
Donatus were taught. His stay in this place was un- 
eventful. In 1497, when he was fourteen years old, 
he was sent to school with the Franciscans at Magde- 
burg, where he spent one year, and thence to another 
school at Eisenach, a little town above which rises the 
hill crowned by the Wartburg, where long before St. 
Elizabeth of Hungary, the holy Landgravine of Thur- 
ingen spent the happier part of her life. Here the 
young student had some relatives, who, his mother 
thought, would give him careful attention, as he was at 
the time recovering from a recent attack of sickness. 
On his arrival he got a share of a room at the scholar's 
Hostel. 

In Eisenach Martin, like many other students of the 
period, was obliged on account of poverty to sing in 
the streets and collect alms from the kindly disposed 
among his hearers. He had a sweet alto voice, which 
later became a tenor. On one of these daily rounds 
from door to door, a lady of gentle birth and charitable 
disposition was attracted to him. Filled with pity for 
his condition, she invited him to her home, where ever 
afterwards he was treated as an intimate of the family. 
The home of this lady is still preserved ; the first story 
being now a Bierstube, while the upper rooms are used 
as a Luther museum. His entrance into the hospitable 
family of Ursula Cotta, opened up another and a new 
world to him. Here the growing youth got the first 
glimpses of the summer side of life and the first taste 
of culture and refinement. The roughness and un- 
couthness brought from the peasant's home and the 
mining town were gradually tempered in the boy by 
refined association with the gentlefolk who frequented 
the Cotta household. Away s from the hardness and 



35 The Facts About Luther 



severity of his early rearing, he began now to enjoy life 
and experience its gentler graces and pleasures. The 
generosity of his benefactress made a profound im- 
pression on him. In his old age he recalled her memory 
with great gratitude and ever referred to her as his 
dear "Wirthin." 

At Eisenach he applied himself diligently to the cul- 
tivation of the -higher studies and laid solidly and well 
the foundation of his subsequent learning. Home and 
school and teachers here were to his liking. They were 
the best he had known and in marked contrast to the 
sort he had hitherto experienced or suffered. In an 
atmosphere full of fine human feelings, he studied with 
pleasure and mastered his tasks with ease and rapidity. 
In those formative years he had as principal of the 
High School he attended an educator who knew how 
to stimulate the lave of study in his pupils. He was a 
Carmelite friar named John Trebonius, one of the most 
distinguished pedagogues of his day. It is related of 
him that upon entering the classroom, he always re- 
moved his scholar's cap and insisted that his associate 
teachers should follow his example, because of the 
respect due to pupils out of whom, he used to say, "God 
might make rulers, chancellors, doctors and magis- 
trates." In Eisenach, at that time, there were besides 
the parish church, no less than nine monasteries and 
nunneries. Here Luther had ample opportunities to 
satisfy his devotion, and the solemn services of the 
Church, the religious dramas and especially the German 
sacred hymns which were wont to be sung by the entire 
congregation, tended to exercise a cheerful and sooth- 
ing influence upon him. Of his life in this place he had 
the tenderest memories and often referred to it as his 
"beloved town." 

From Eisenach, Luther went in the summer of isor 
to Erfurt, noted for its old tile-roofed houses and 
known in those days as "The Kitchen Garden Town." 
It was a prosperous, rich and populous city. It boasted 
some sixty thousand inhabitants and possessed not only 
one of the finest cathedrals in the country, but the 
greatest of the German Universities of the period. This 



Luther Before His Defection 39 



University was established by a Bull of Clement VII. 
in the year 1379 and was the fifth in rank to be founded 
in Germany. Its fame was widespread and its renown 
attracted students from all parts of the country and 
even from abroad. It was a common saying, "Who ! 
would study rightly must go to Erfurt." This Univer- 
sity boasted the presence of some of the greatest pro- 
fessors of the time. The most remarkable of these was 
Jodocus Trutvetter,tyho, in the departments of philoso- 
phy, theology and dialectics, stood without an ad- 
mitted rival in educational circles. Luther spoke of 
this professor later as not only "the first theologian 
and philosopher/' but also "the first of contemporary 
dialecticians/' Another famous professor of the Uni- 
versity was the Augustinian friar, Bartolomaeus 
Arnoldi Von Unsigen, who was not only a profound 
scholar but a most versatile and prolific writer. Loyal 
Germans were proud of these brilliant lights, whose 
fame and genius, they thought, had made the Univer- 
sity of Erfurt as well known as that of Paris. 

Luther's father entertained a high opinion of his 
son's talents. He wanted him to become a great scholar 
and a man of renown. His ambition was to see his 
son hold a high and influential place in the social scale. 
He had hopes that in time he would reach the honor- 
able and lucrative position of legal adviser to the 
Counts of Mansfelt, who had befriended him in his 
earlier days when he had little of life's comforts. "The 
father," as Vedder remarks, "wished his boy to be 
spared the grinding toil he had known and to enjoy 
advantages he had missed. He saw, as many a poor 
man has seen since, that for a youth of talent, ability 
and application, the most direct avenue to influence 
and power is through the higher education and the 
scholarly advantages thereby afforded." To further his 
designs, he marked out a career for his boy; he was 
ambitious to fit him for the profession of law, which 
in that day, was a path to the most lucrative offices 
both in Church and State. As the result of frugality 
and industry his financial condition had improved and 
he was no longer dependent on the help of strangers. 



40 The Facts About Luther 



He, moreover, rose in the esteem of his fellow towns- 
men until he became Burgomaster of Mansfelt. His 
improved financial standing quickened the desire he 
had to give his son the advantages of a University- 
training whereby he would be fitted to become a skill- 
ful and learned lawyer and thus in time reach the 
mighty things expected of him through association 
with the influential and powerful classes. The father's 
joy was great when he was able to take his son out of 
the ranks of the "poor students" and in accordance 
with a long-cherished project pay with his own means 
for the completion of his boy's education. 

The growing youth was now in his eighteenth year. 
He was entered in the Matriculation Register of the 
Erfurt High School as "Martinus Ludher ex Mans- 
felt/'' and for a considerable time thereafter, he con- 
tinued to spell his family name as Luder, a form which 
is also to be found up to the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century in the case of others — Liider, Luider, 
Leuder. From 15 12 he began, however, to sign him- 
self "Lutherius" or "Luther" by which change of name 
he has been designated ever since. ( Kostlin-Kawerau 
I, p. 754, n. 2, p. 166.) 

When Martin entered the University he found the 
students divided into two groups, one known as the 
"Humanists" or so-called "poets" and the other as 
"Scholastics" or "philosophers." The former sacredly 
devoted themselves to the study of the Latin classics 
and aimed to found all branches of learning on the 
literature and culture of classical antiquity; the 
latter, whilst they favored the pagan Latin models of 
style and eloquence, preferred and attached more im- 
portance to the cultivation and study of logic and scho- 
lastic philosophy. The Humanists considered that a 
classical training alone could form a perfect man. The 
philosophers, never adverse to the study of the classic 
languages as a means of education, were unwilling that 
the worldly paganized concept of life advocated by the 
ancients should prevail against the spiritual glorifica- 
tion of humanity expounded and maintained in the 
traditional teaching of the Church, 



Luther Before His Defection 41 



Luther, with hi§, vivacity of thought and feeling, 
soon discovered that a number of his fellow students 
were secretly opposed to sound scholastic studies and 
vigorous mental training and covertly endeavored to 
bring back to Christendom the ideals of the most de- 
cadent days of Greece and Rome. Their humanistic 
spirit then did not impress him much, and although 
in his private time he studied the Latin classics, more 
particularly Cicero, Virgil, Livy, Ovid, also Terence, 
Juvenal, Horace and Plautus, it seems he never quali- 
fied to enter the secret "poetic" circle composed of 
many of the best minds of the day. In a spirit of 
genuine love of culture he studied the classic authors, 
but, whilst Latin was the language of the classroom 
in all the Universities and became a second mother 
tongue to him, as to all the scholars of the day, yet he 
paid little attention to grammatical details and never 
attained to Ciceronian purity and elegance in speech 
or writing. He knew Latin well enough for all prac- 
tical purposes and at a later period he was able to make 
skillful use of quotations from the ancient authors 
when occasion demanded. Whilst fair progress was 
made in his humanistic studies, he preferred to centre 
his attention on the more useful branches of learning-, 
logic and scholastic philosophy. To these studies he 
gave his chief attention and whilst he made great pro- 
gress, he did not particularly distinguish himself in 
them. Melanchthon said: "The whole University 
admired his genius." The praise bestowed by the col- 
league of his after days does not seem, however, to 
have been warranted by the facts. According to 
Vedder, a non-Catholic writer, "Luther apparently 
made no deep impression on the University and prob- 
ably, but for his later distinction, few or none of his 
fellow students would have recalled that while among 
them he had been known as 'Musicus/ on account of 
his learning to play the lute, and as the 'Philosopher' 
owing to his frequent fits of moodiness." "In the 
numerous letters left to posterity by the aspiring Erfurt 
Humanists, his name is never mentioned. Melanch- 
thon's statement, that Luther's talents were the wonder 



42 The Facts About Luther 



of the University, is hardly borne out by the record, 
for when he took his baccalaureate degree, at Michael- 
mas, in 1502, he ranked only thirteenth in a list of 
fifty-seven candidates. That is respectable, to be sure, 
but one requires the vivid imagination of an eulogist 
to see anything of startling brilliancy in it. He did 
better in taking his Master's degree at Epiphany in 
1 5°5> when he ranked second among seventeen can- 
didates." (Vedder, p. 5.) 

Of his life during his University days, we have no 
very clear account, owing to the silence of our sources. 
From scattered sayings of his own in after life we 
learn he did not look back with any great delight to his 
student days at Erfurt. He coarsely described the 
town as a "beer house" and a "nest of immorality." 

Luther finished his general education when he was 
about twenty-one. The time had now come when he 
was to take up the study of jurisprudence in accord- 
ance with his father's long-cherished project. The 
prospect, however, was little to his liking, as he had 
a decided distaste to the legal profession. "Jurists/* 
as he thought afterwards, "made bad Christians and 
few of them would be saved. They take the money of 
the poor and with the tongue deplete both their pocket 
and their purse." Notwithstanding his dislike of the 
legal profession, however, he began the study of law 
in earnest and his work was all that could be de- 
sired. After being a law-student for only a few 
weeks he suddenly abandoned his studies to the great 
disappointment of his father, and returned home for a. 
brief visit during which time his thoughts turned into 
quite a new channel. Ignoring the course mapped out 
by his father for his future career, he inconsiderately 
and precipitately determined to abandon the world and 
work out his salvation within the quiet of the cloister 
walls. He was on his way to become an excellent 
professor and an accomplished advocate, when, un- 
fortunately for himself he resolved, without due con- 
sideration of his natural disposition, to become a friar. 
Before finally taking the unexpected step, he resorted 
to a very strange and unusual preparation for the 



Luther Before His Defection 43 



state of life he intended to embrace. He wanted to 
meet, for the last time, a few of his friends and 
some "honest, virtuous maidens and women" and 
accordingly he invited them to a farewell dinner, which 
was given on the eve of his entrance into the Augus- 
tinian Monastery at Erfurt, July 17, 1505. At the 
banquet Luther outwardly was in a most cheerful 
mood. He was full of frolic and while the wine-cup 
passed freely, he enlivened the gathering by his lute- 
playing and singing. The merry guests had little ink- 
ling of the unquiet state of his mind and they were 
thoroughly surprised when he announced before the 
parting that he was about to renounce the world and 
become an Augustinian friar. "You see me to-day/' 
he said, "but henceforth no more." 

His guests, knowing how unfitted he seemed for the 
monastic career, and sorry to lose a jovial companion, 
pleaded with him to reconsider his decision and loudly 
protested against his action. They looked upon him as 
just an average youth, in no ways remarkable for piety 
or religious zeal, and they knew, moreover, how he 
enjoyed the pleasures of life, mingling with the 
frivolous in the merriment of the time and indulging 
in boar-hunting and other worldly amusements. They 
instinctively felt he was not qualified or fitted for the 
sublime vocation to which he aspired and they accord- 
ingly used all their powers to dissuade him from the 
course he had chosen. All their efforts were fruitless, 
and from the gaiety and frolic of the banquet hall he 
went out to the monastery, at whose gates his jolly 
companions bade him farewell This unexpected step 
came as a terrible blow to his father. All the plans 
he had made for the future well-being of his son were 
shattered in a moment. The sacrifices he had made 
and the toils he endured to advance his son in a worldly 
career were made valueless by the willfulness of him 
for whom they had been cheerfully and generously 
given. The disappointment was great and his fury 
broke out in uncontrollable denunciation. 

We naturally ask ourselves now, how was it that 
Luther, with his head full of worldly ambition, and 



44 



The Facts About Luther 



already fairly distinguished by his learning and honored 
with the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, how was 
it he abandoned the secular calling to embrace the 
religious ? 

The motives that prompted Luther's sudden resolve 
to enter the monastery "are," says Ganss, "various, 
conflicting and the subject of considerable debate. He 
himself alleges that the brutality of his home and 
school-life drove him into the monastery. Hausrath, 
one of the most scholarly Luther specialists, unreserv- 
edly inclines to this belief. The "house at Mansfelt 
rather repelled than attracted him." (Beard, "Martin 
Luther and the Germ. Ref.," London, 1889, 146), and 
to "the question 'why did Luther go into the monas- 
tery?' the reply that Luther himself gives, is the most 
satisfactory." (Hausrath, "Luther Leben," 1, Berlin, 
1904, 2, 22.") 

"He, himself again, in a letter to his father in ex- 
planation of his defection from the Old Church, writes, 
"When I was over-stricken and overwhelmed by the 
fear of impending death, I made an involuntary and 
forced vow." (De Wette, "Dr. Martin Luther's 
Briefe," 11 Berlin, 1825, 101.) Various explanations 
are given of this episode. Melanchthon ascribes his 
step to a deep melancholy, which attained a critical 
point "when at one time he lost one of his comrades 
by an accidental death." (Corp. Ref. VI, 156.) Coch- 
laeus relates "that at one time he was so frightened in 
a field at a thunderbolt, as is commonly reported, or 
was in such anguish at the loss of a companion who 
was killed in the storm, that in a short time, to the 
amazement of many persons, he sought admission to 
the Order of St. Augustine." (Cochlaeus, "Historia, 
D. M. Luther's Dillingen" 1571, 2.) Mathesius, his first 
biographer, attributes it to the fatal "stabbing of a 
friend and a terrible storm with a thunderclap." (op. 
cit., fol. 46.) Seckendorf, who made careful research, 
following Bavarus (Beyer), a pupil of Luther, goes a 
step farther, calling this unknown friend Alexius, and 
ascribes his death to a thunderbolt. (Seckendorf, 
"Ausfiihrliche Historie des Lutherthums," Leipzig, 



Luther Before His Defection 45 



1714, 51.) D'Aubigne changes this Alexius into Alexis 
and has him assassinated at Erfurt. (D'Aubigne, "His- 
tory of the Reformation," New York, s. d., 1, 166.) 
Oerger ("Von Jungen Luther," Erfurt, 1899, 27-41), 
has proved the existence of this friend, his name of 
Alexius or Alexis, his death by lightning or assassina- 
tion, a mere legend, destitute of all historical verifica- 
tion. Kostlin-Kawerau (1, 45), states that returning 
from his "Mansfelt home he was overtaken by a ter- 
rible storm, with an alarming lightning flash and 
thunderbolt. Terrified and overwhelmed, he cries out : 
"Help, St. Anna, I will be a monk." "The inner his- 
tory of the change is far less easy to narrate. We have 
no direct contemporary evidence on which to rely, 
while Luther's own reminiscencet, on which we chiefly 
depend, are necessarily colored by his later experiences 
and feelings." (Beard, op. cit. 146.) (Cath. Encyc, 
Vol. X, p. 439. 

When we consider the motives that prompted Luther 
to abandon the world, we fear he knew little about the 
ways of God and was not well informed of the gravity 
and responsibilities of the step he was taking. The 
calling he aspired to is the highest given to man on 
earth and because it is a ministry of salvation, replete 
with solemn and sacred obligations, it should not be 
embraced without prayerful consideration and wise 
and prudent counsel. It is only when vocation is suf- 
ficiently pronounced and when one by one the different 
stages of the journey in which are acquired continu- 
ally increasing helps towards reaching the appointed 
goal, are passed, that one should enter the sanctuary. 
"No man," says St. Paul, "takes the honor to himself, 
but he that is called by God." That Luther was not 
called by God to conventual life seems evident enough 
from all the circumstances. Every sign and mark one 
looks for in aspirants to the monastic life were ap- 
parently lacking in him. Parent and friend alike knew 
this and opposed his course, feeling it was merely the 
expression of a temporary attitude of mind and not a 
real vocation. Luther himself admits that he was driven 
by despair, rather than the love of higher perfection, 



46 



The Facts About Luther 



into a religious career. He says: "I entered the 
monastery and renounced the world because I de- 
spaired of myself all the while." From his earliest days 
he was subject to fits of depression and melancholy. 
Emotional by temperament, he would pass suddenly 
from mirth and cheerfulness to a gloomy, despondent 
state of mind in which he was tormented by frightful 
searchings of conscience. The fear of God's judg- 
ments and the recollection of his own sins sorely tried 
him and caused unnecessary anxiety and dread as to 
his fate. He saw in himself nothing but sin and in 
God nothing but anger and revenge. He fell a victim 
to excessive scrupulousness, and, as he was self- 
opinionated and stubborn-minded, he relied altogether 
too much on his ovfci righteousness and disregarded 
the remedies most effectual for his spiritual condition. 
Like all those who trust in themselves, he rushed from 
extreme timidity to excessive rashness. Had he con- 
sulted those who were skilled in the direction of con- 
ventual religious and made known the troubled waters 
beneath the smooth surface of his daily life, he might 
have been made to understand that, owing to his ab- 
normal state of mind and his natural disposition, he 
was not fitted for the carrying out of the evangelical 
counsels and thus have been prevented from forcing 
himself into a mould for which he was manifestly un- 
suited. In the uneasy and serious state of his con- 
science the advice and counsel of the wise and prudent 
were ignored. Moved by his own feelings and relying 
on his own powers, he suddenly and secretly decided 
for himself a career in life which, as events proved, 
was not only a mistake as far as he was concerned, but 
one fraught with disaster to innumerable others, whom 
he afterwards influenced to join in his revolt against 
the Mother Church. 

Without advice and without full deliberation, even in 
spite of the oposition of those who knew him best, he 
determined to become a friar. Accordingly^ he wended 
his way to the Augustinian monastery ancl presented 
himself for admission as a novice. The prior received 
the young Master of Arts graciously and took him in ap- 



4 



Luther Before His Defection 47 
• 

parently without difficulty, not fearing, as the Superior 
of a modern religious house would most certainly fear, 
lest a vocation thus suddenly formed should be after- 
wards as suddenly abandoned. However, the Superior 
put the usual question, "What seekest thou, my son?" 
and Luther replied as was customary, "I seek the 
mercy of God and your fellowship/' These prelimin- 
aries over, he was permitted to enter. According ta 
the Rule of the Augustinian Order, the young postu- 
lant was now given ample time to learn what lay before 
him as a friar previous to donning the novice's garb. 
An experienced member of the Order all the while ex- 
plained the Rule to him and repeatedly reminded him 
that he should weigh well and earnestly, whether, as 
stated in the statutes of the Order, "the spirit which 
was leading him was of God." Only after this prep- 
aration was he clothed with the habit of the Order r 
which consisted of a white woolen tunic, a scapular, 
also white, falling over the breast and back and a black 
mantle with a hood and wide sleeves. 

During the time spent in preparation for the recep- 
tion of the habit Luther was invisible to the world 
beyond the monastery gate. When he began the novi- 
tiate, which lasted a whole year, he was required to 
study and live under rules and usages which regulated 
every hour of his monastic life. He had to spend many 
hours of the day and night in exercises consisting in 
prayers, manual labor, and penitential works, all of 
which were intended to fit him for reception into the 
Order. 

This was the formative period of the young novice. 
He was supposed to reflect seriously upon the duties 
and obligations which at the profession he would take 
upon himself, and weigh earnestly the purity of his 
motives and the spirit which was leading him. "The 
Lord forbids that a blind being should be offered up' 
to Him," and as the religious tie was never intended 
to bring misery in place of the happiness which it 
promises, he as a novice was entirely free until the 
hour of profession to abandon his course and return 
to the world. The doors of religious houses were their 



48 



The Facts About Luther 



as now always open to those who feel they are not 
called to follow the evangelical counsels. 

The day came at last for Luther's profession. The 
ceremony brought together a large congregation. The 
church was crowded with the townspeople and students 
from the University. After the usual preliminary 
services and when the superiors, who made the official 
inquiries about the novice's motives, were satisfied he 
would take the vows "at his own desire, freely, not 
influenced by force or fear/' the candidate was ad- 
mitted to make his profession and was robed in the 
black habit and hood of the Hermits of St. Augustine. 
This ceremony made him no longer a man in the world 
but a monk in the cloister. He now bound himself by 
a sacred oath to God to prepare himself for heaven 
by treading a path of life in which perfection is sought 
in carrying out the evangelical counsels of the Sa- 
viour, and engaged throughout his mortal career to 
combat the temptations of the world with the weapons 
of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The habit, how- 
ever, does not make the monk ; much more is required. 
And now we ask, if all the while during his noviceship 
Martin was under the impression that his vow to be- 
come a religious was only a "forced" one, as he after- 
wards alleged, did he act honestly when he knelt down 
before his prior, Wienand of Diedenhofen, and bound 
himself by the most solemn and sacred oath to per- 
severe until death in poverty, chastity and obedience, 
according to the rule of the Order of St. Augustine? 
Did he act honestly when he first thought of becoming 
a friar by concealing his impetuous resolve from the 
superior of the monastery, who would hardly have 
received him into the Order had he been made aware 
of his rash selection of a state of life? Did he act ' 
honestly in holding to his resolution when he knew 
that a vow would not have been considered as binding 
unless made with full deliberation, and that even if valid 
when originally made, it was no longer binding from 
the time when, after conscientious self-examination, he 
became aware that, owing to his natural disposition, he 
had no vocation for the religious life? What made 



Luther Before His Defection 49 



him pursue such an unwise and untenable -course? 
Was he dominated by that spirit of dogged persever- 
ance or obstinacy, whereby, as we know, he was deter- 
mined, at whatever cost, always to go through with 
anything he had once begun? 

After making his profession, the young religious was 
directed by his superiors to study theology. He im- 
mersed himself in his tasks and took great pleasure in 
supplementing the teachings of the schoolmen and the 
Fathers of the Church by constant and frequent read- 
ing of the Sacred Scriptures which were for him, as 
they should be for all, a well of instruction and en- 
lightenment. The ponderous red copy of the Bible 
possessed by the monastery was well thumbed. His 
course in theology was not, however, as long as it might 
have been, for we find he was raised to the priesthood 
in a very short time after the year of his novitiate was 
completed. 

He celebrated his first Mass on Cantate Sunday, 
May 2, 1507. It was a day of great import; an oc- 
casion for the assembling of old friends. He invited his 
father and many other gue§ts to be present at the 
ceremony which meant so much to him, his kindred 
and his acquaintances. Thus, in a letter of invitation 
to Johann Braun, Vicar in Eisenach, who befriended 
him in his early struggles for an education, he shows 
how high an estimate he had of the sacerdotal office 
and dignity which had been conferred upon him. In 
this document, the earliest we have of him, he says 
that, "God had chosen him, an unworthy sinner, for 
the unspeakable dignity of His service at the altar,"^ 
and he begged his good benefactor to be present at his 
first mass and by his prayers to assist him, "so that 
his sacrifice might be pleasing in the sight of God." 
The sacred service began. He appeared to be recollect- 
ed, but in reality he was awe-stricken and oppressed 
beyond measure. He could hardly contain himself 
for excitement and fear. The sense of his unworthi- 
ness to celebrate the divine mysteries tormented him. 
The words "Te igitur clementissime Pater/' at the 
commencement of the Canon of the Mass, and "offero 



50 



The Facts About Luther 



tibi Deo meo vivo et vero," at the oblation, brought so 
vividly to his mind the Awful Eternal Majesty, that 
he was hardly able to go on. He was so greatly agi- 
tated that he would have come down from the altar 
had not the prior of the convent hindered him. The 
terrifying idea he had of God spoilt even the happiness 
of that day. This may account in great part for his 
fearful hatred of the Mass in later days. Many years 
afterwards, he says, with reference to his entrance on 
the priesthood : "When I said my first Mass at Erfurt, 
I was all but dead, for I was without faith; it was 
unjust and too great forbearance in God, that the earth 
did not at the time swallow up both myself and the 
bishop who ordained me." 

Old Hans Luther assisted at the ceremony and 
brought a company of friends who rode to the convent 
door "on twenty horses. ,, His heart was not really in 
the celebration, but the old miner did not wish by his 
absence to shame his oldest and most promising son. 
His attendance was the first sign of his acquiescence 
in his son's vocation. The ceremonies in the church 
having been concluded, a modest repast was served 
in the monastery to the invited guests. Then Luther 
and his father met for the first time since the son's last 
visit home on the eve of his withdrawal from the world. 
In the course of conversation at the dinner table the 
young priest endeavored to justify himself for chang- 
ing the career his parent had marked out for him and 
he longed to receive from his father's lips some words 
of approval and congratulation. He spoke of the re- 
ligious calling, praised the monastic life as peaceful, 
pleasant, and godly, and went on to recall the vow, the 
inconsiderate and forced vow, he had made at the time 
of the thunderstorm, claiming that he had been im- 
pelled by "terror from Heaven." The speech was too 
much for the level-headed father, who did not hesitate 
there and then to make known the feelings that filled 
his heart. Glancing round the table and addressing 
all thereat, he remarked dryly, "I must sit here and 
eat and drink, when I would much rather be anywhere 
else. Have you never heard that a child should obey 



Luther Before His Defection 



51 



his father and his mother? Contrary to the fourth 
commandment, you have left me and your mother in 
our old age, when we expected help and consolation 
from you after expending so much upon your educa- 
tion." Luther tried to soften the old mans heart, but 
all efforts in this direction were useless. When at last 
he insisted that he had only followed the divine call 
on entering the monastery, the sturdy old peasant, 
highly irritated, interposed with this reply ; "God grant 
it may not prove a delusion and a diabolical specter." 
Luther was stung by the remark, but did not pay much 
attention to it at the time. He thought the saying was 
only an impatient exclamation in keeping with the 
character of the man and with the severity which he 
was accustomed to from his earliest days in the home 
circle. He, however, never forgot the remark of his 
father. It afterwards caused him much anguish of 
spirit and doubts of the wisdom and righteousness of 
his course. Referring to the speech of his father in 
later days, he tells how "it struck such deep root in his 
heart that he never heard anything from his mouth 
which he remembered so tenaciously. He thought God 
spoke by his lips." "However," he goes on to say, "at 
that time I was so obdurate in my devotional intent 
that I shut my heart as much as I could against his 
words, as being only of man." 

Luther was now a religious and a priest. There is no 
reason to doubt that he realized to the fullest extent 
the cares, duties, and responsibilities of his sacred 
calling and with apparent ardor, devotion and faith- 
fulness, he endeavored to pass his life in correspond- 
ence with its spirit and requirements. The few years he 
spent in the priesthood before his defection were strenu- 
ous, active and busy. He lectured, as best he could 
and as well as his previous hurried preparation per- 
mitted, on Ethics in the Faculty of Philosophy and on 
special portions of the Holy Scriptures in the newly 
founded University of Wittenberg, a town accredited 
then as the most bibulous one of the most bibulous 
province (Saxony) of Germany. In addition to these 
labors, he preached alternately in the monastery of 



52 



The Facts About Luther 



his Order, the Castle Chapel and the Collegiate Church 
of the town. His duties were manifold and the largest 
demands were made upon his energies. He had little 
time left after fulfilling his various offices for intellec- 
tual pursuits. The story of his all too rapid advance- 
ment shows his preparatory studies to have been any- 
thing but deep, solid, and systematic. "Comparatively 
considered/' Fr. Johnston says, "the theological cul- 
ture he received was not on a par with that required 
now by the average seminarian, let alone a Doctor of 
Divinity." He w 7 as sharp, fiery, intelligent, and pos- 
sessed much fancy and originality, but his knowledge 
was merely elementary. He had no appreciation of 
the scholastic speculation and logic so much honored 
at the time ; in fact, he hated the whole system of the 
schoolmen, not excepting even the great scholar and 
theologian, St. Thomas. Scholastic subtleties were not 
always to his liking and to show his contempt thereof 
he frequently pays his compliments to the "rancid 
rules of the logicians," and to "that putrid philosopher 
Aristotle." A feeling of the insufficiency of his educa- 
tion tormented him all through his life. He expressed 
very strongly to Staupitz his fear to stand for the 
doctorate and only consented under pressure to pass 
the required examination to comply with the wishes 
of the Superior of his Order. "I was obliged/' he 
says, "to take the degree of Doctor of Divinity and to 
promise under oath that I would preach the Holy 
Scriptures which were very dear to me, faithfully and 
without adulteration." To the study of the Bible he 
gave himself up with great ardor, so much so that he 
neglected the rest of his theological education, and his 
teacher Usingen was obliged to protest against his one- 
sided study of the sacred text. It cannot be denied 
that he was industrious, self-reliant, ambitious, but 
withal, he was not a methodically trained man. At 
bottom, he was neither a philosopher nor a theologian, 
and at no time of his life, despite his efforts to acquire 
knowledge, did he show 7 himself more than superficially 
equipped to grapple with serious and difficult philo- 



Luther Before His Defection 53 



sophical and religious problems. His study never rose 
to brilliancy. 

Luther's professorial duties were interrupted for a 
short while when in the autumn of 1510 he set out for 
Rome on business connected with the welfare of his 
Order. His absence extended over a period of four 
or five months, only one of which he spent in the 
Eternal City.* After attending to the mission en- 
trusted to him, he spent much of his time in sight- 
seeing, visiting the holy places, and secretly taking 
lessons in Hebrew from a Jew called Jacob, "who gave 
himself out as a physician." Like the average traveller 
to the city to-day, he could not be expected in the short 
time he remained there to study the character of a 
people of whose language he was ignorant and to set 
himself up as a judge of the country and a censor of 
its citizens. Looking at things through his German 
spectacles, it seems, if we can credit his later writings, 
that his observations concerning the condition of things 
in Rome were not to his liking. He is said to have 
been thunderstruck with the wickedness and impiety 
of the Romans and of Italians in general. Their south- 
ern freedom and lack of restraint were not such as to 
appeal to his phlegmatic, northern temperament. It 
was, therefore, easy for him to believe all the anecdotes 
concerning the corruption then supposed to be rampant 
in lay and ecclesiastical circles which he claimed were 
told him by his not over trustworthy guides and 
acquaintances. Most of his experiences are given in 
the "Table Talk" and his later writings, and may 
be summed up in the following words he says he heard 
fall from the lips of one of his companions : "If there 
be a Hell, then Rome is built on it." In the works 
alluded to the share which he himself actually took in 
the pious pilgrim-exercises of the time is kept very 
much in the background. Indeed, he tells that whilst 
he was in Rome he celebrated Mass "perhaps once, 
perhaps ten times : i. e., occasionally, not regularly." 
Can it be possible that there were no good people in 
Rome at the time of his visit, or was it that in the 
moroseness of his spirit he was looking only for 



54 The Fact's About Luther 



abominations and corruption ? When was there a time 
when there were not scandals? It must needs be on 
account of the depravity of human nature that they 
exist. But whilst we admit that there may have been 
and actually were many influenced by the godless spirit 
of the world at the time, we cannot see how any 
amount of corruption of morals should unduly in- 
fluence any one who consistently and thoroughly loves 
virtue and hates vice. If we admit that Luther was 
greatly scandalized at what he heard and saw, how 
comes it that we hear nothing from him about his 
experiences in Rome after he left the city and returned 
home? Jurgens says, "He may have spoken of these 
things to his friends/' He may, yes, but did he? If 
his visit turned his reverence for Rome into loathing, 
as his admirers glory in narrating, we have no proof 
of it in his writings and addresses immediately after 
his return to Erfurt. Bayne, a non-Catholic writer, 
alluding to this matter says: "In his letters of those 
years he never mentions having been in Rome. In 
conference with Cardinal Cajetan, in his disputations 
with Dr. Eck, in his epistles to Pope Leo, nay, in his 
tremendous broadside of invective and accusation 
against all things Romish, in his 'Address to the Ger- 
man Nation and Nobility/ there occurs not one un- 
mistakable reference to his having been in Rome. By 
every rule of evidence we are bound to hold that when 
the most furious assailant Rome has ever known de- 
scribed from a distance of ten years upwards, the in- 
cidents of a journey through Italy to Rome, the few 
touches of light in his picture are more trustworthy 
than its black breadths of shade/' (Bayne, "Martin 
Luther/' 1,234.) Whilst we admit that there may 
have been by far too much wickedness and impiety in 
the Rome of the Popes of the heights of the Renais- 
sance, we beg to be allowed to question its extent 
and especially to doubt the accuracy of the statements 
made by Luther ten years after his visit to Rome, when 
he was exceedingly spiteful and anger against the Holy 
City displaced his old-time reverence. It is hardly 
worth while to go into the details of the scandals he 



Luther Before His Defection 55 



relates when he severed his connection with the 
Church. The intelligent reader can determine for 
himself whether a man who is capable of telling or 
believing all the absurd anecdotes about the condition 
of things at Rome he mentions in his later writings,, 
can be looked upon as an impartial witness ; or 
whether the scathing arraingement which he pro- 
nounces at a distance of ten years can be considered 
reliable. To say the least Luther's whole Romaa 
experience, as described by him in his later years 
when he was in open rebellion against the Church, 
is open to question. Hausrath, a non-Catholic writer, 
does not hesitate to say : "We can really question the 
importance attached to remarks which in a great 
measure date from the last years of his life, when he 
was really a changed man. Much that he relates as. 
personal experience is manifestly the product of an 
easily explained self-delusion." (Hausrath, "Luther's 
Romfahrt," p. 79.) 

Many non-Catholic authors delight to regale their 
readers with all the absurd and incredible stories 
Luther told later on in his life about his visit to Rome. 
Their object is to furnish a graphic historical begin- 
ning of the change Luther's mind was undergoing; 
towards the Church. With all due respect for what 
these ill-informed writers allege, we are obliged in the 
interest of truth to tell them that Luther's visit to 
Rome in nowise shook his conviction of the author- 
ity of the Holy See or affected in the least his spiritual- 
life and theological thought. In support of this state- 
ment, we quote Vedder, the latest of the non-Catholic 
writers on Luther, who says : "His faith in the Church, 
and its system was not at that time seriously affected."* 
(Vedder, p. 12.) Long before this statement was an- 
nounced, we find the non-Catholic Hausrath declaring: 
that Luther "returned from Rome as strong in the 
faith as he went to visit it. In a certain sense his 
sojourn in Rome even strengthened his religious con- 
victions." (Hausrath, "M. Luther's Romfahrt," p. 98.) 

In the spring of 151 1, when he was nearing eight- 
and-twenty years of age, we find him back at the 



56 The Facts About Luther 



University of Erfurt. At the time he journeyed to 
Rome, his character was not yet sufficiently formed; 
he was, as Oldecop says, "a wild young fellow." How- 
ever, for five or six years after his return we find that 
he lectured, preached and wrote on the Catholic means 
of Grace, the Mass, Indulgences and Prayer in entire 
accordance with the traditional doctrine of the Church. 
Just to show some of the ill-informed the Catholic 
thoughts which engaged him in his wanderings 
through Rome we give his words on the power of the 
Papacy and commend them to the consideration of the 
serious. "If," he says, "Christ had not entrusted all 
power to one man, the Church would not have been 
perfect because there would have been no order and 
each one would have been able to say he was led by 
the Holy Spirit. This is what the heretics did, each 
one setting up his own principle. In this way as many 
Churches arose as there were heads. Christ therefore 
wills, in order that all may be assembled in one unity, 
that his power be exercised by one man to whom also 
He commits it. He has, however, made this Power so 
strong that He looses all the powers of Hell, without 
injury, against it. He says: The gates of Hell shall 
not prevail against it/ as though He said : They will 
fight against it but never overcome it/ so that in this 
way it is made manifest that this power is in reality 
from God and not from man. Wherefore whoever 
breaks away from this unity and order of the Power, 
let him not boast of great enlightenment and wonder- 
ful works, as our Picards and other heretics do, for 
much better is obedience than the victims of fools who 
know not 'what evil they do.' " "Eccles. IV, 17." 
(Werke Weim. ed. 1, 1883, p. 69). 

This extract teems with respect for the head of the 
Church and may well be recommended for considera- 
tion to all who claim without warrant that the Re- 
former was disturbed by what he saw and heard in 
Rome. 

Luther, as remarked before, led a busy life whilst 
he was a monk. His duties were manifold and exact- 
ing. Constant demands were made upon his time and 



Luther Before His Defection 57 



resources on account of the many offices he was called 
on to fulfill. He had few spare moments for intellec- 
tual pursuits, and to allow more ample time for study ; 
his religious duties were performed but irregularly 
and spasmodically. This course could only bode ill 
for his future. Infractions of the rules, breaches of 
discipline, distorted ascetic practises were frequent 
and followed ever with increasing gravity. We are 
told he sometimes omitted to recite the Divine Office 
for three or four weeks together, a duty to which, 
after the observance of his vows, he was bound under 
the penalty of grievous sin. Then in a fit of parox- 
ysmal remorse he would lock himself into his cell and 
set to work to repair the omission by a continuous 
recitation of all that had been left unsaid. On these 
ocassions he would abstain from all food and drink 
and torture himself by harrowing mortifications. 

According to the account Luther gives of himself 
in later years he was "a religious of the strictest 
observance." "I was a pious monk/' he says, "and so 
strictly followed the Rule of my Order, that I dare to 
say if ever any man could have been saved by monkery, 
I was that monk. I was a monk in earnest, and fol- 
lowed the Rule of my Order more strictly than I can 
express. If ever monk could obtain Heaven by his 
monkish works, I should certainly have been entitled 
to it. Of all this, the friars who have known me can 
testify. If it had continued much longer, I should 
have carried my mortifications even to death, by means 
of watchings, prayers, readings, and other labors." 
How far this may have been true it is difficult to say. 
Whatever his fellow-monks may have been able to 
testify there is no extant record of their confirmatory 
testimony on this point. One thing at least is clear 
from Luther's own words. His spiritual endeavors, 
whether earnest or not, were singularly ill-regulated 
and according to an old monastic proverb : "Every- 
thing beyond obedience looks suspicious in a monk." 

It seems that during his religious life he was much 
agitated and given to gloom and despair by the sense 
of sin. He saw in himself nothing but sin, more sin 



-58 The Facts About Luther 



than he felt he could atone for by any works of pen- 
ance. Apparently he had strong passions which fre- 
quently asserted themselves and which he sought to 
subdue in his own way. In all his prayers and fastings 
the conception of God he placed before his mind was 
^ery much that of a God of avenging justice and very 
little that of a God of mercy. The fear of the divine 
^wrath made him abnormally apprehensive and pre- 
vented him from experiencing comfort and help in the 
performance of religious exercises. His sorrow for 
sin was devoid of humble charity and instead of trust- 
ing with childlike confidence in the pardoning mercy 
of * God and in the merits of Christ, as the Church 
always exhorted the sorely tried to do, he gave himself 
up to black despair. His singularity brought on dis- 
tress of soul and his anxiety increased until wakeful- 
ness became a confirmed habit. His condition became 
so sad that at times his fellow-monks feared he was on 
the verge of madness. In his later days, he drew this 
picture of his state of soul whilst he was a monk. 
"From misplaced reliance on my righteousness," he 
says, "my heart became full of distrust, doubt, fear, 
hatred and blasphemy of God. I was such an enemy 
of Christ that whenever I saw an image or a picture 
of him hanging on His Cross, I loathed the sight and 
I shut my eyes and felt that I would rather have seen 
the devil. My spirit was completely broken and I was 
always in a state of melancholy; for, do what I would, 
my 'righteousness' and my 'good works' brought me 
210 help or consolation." (Janssen, Vol. Ill, p. 84.) 

Was this the fault of the state of life he had chosen? 
Perhaps, inasmuch as he had entered into it without 
due deliberation. But passing this consideration over, 
we feel that had he not disregarded the monastic 
regulations for those of his own devising and had he 
put into practise the wise directions of his spiritual 
guides, his troubles of soul would certainly have been 
much mitigated and considerably surmounted. Like 
most victims of scrupulosity he saw nothing in himself 
but wickedness and corruption. Not content with the 
ordinary spiritual exercises prescribed by the rule of 



Luther Before His Defection 59 



the Order, he marked out for himself an independent 
path of righteousness. He wanted to have his own 
way, and, as is usual in the case of all stubborn minds, 
the arbitrary means he resorted to for relief only made 
his condition worse. "I prescribed/' he says, "special 
tasks to myself and had my own ways. My superiors 
fought against this singularity and they did so rightly. 
I was an infamous persecutor and murderer of my 
own life, because I fasted, prayed, watched, and tried 
myself beyond my powers, which was nothing but 
suicide." (Jurgens I, 577, 585.) 

Luther in his struggle to overcome his passions and 
attain the perfection of his priestly state seemed to 
forget the words of Christ : "Without Me you can do 
nothing." Here was his great mistake. To arrive at 
sanctity of life by one's own justice and the power of 
works alone is not only impossible, but absurd. Such 
a course was never advanced or advocated by the 
Qatholic Church, and when Kostlin and other non- 
Catholic writers say that thh Catholic teaching drove 
Luther to the extravagances of his distorted ascetic 
practises, they probably have of that teaching the 
same wrong idea that Luther had. "I am," he said, 
"a most presumptuous justifier, who trusts not in God's 
justice, but in my own." A true Catholic is never 
expected to become a "presumptuous justifier" and he 
never can unless he relies too much, if not entirely, 
on his own merits and good works. 

Luther now began to think that the sad condition 
of his soul resulted from the teaching of the Church 
on good works while all the time he was living in 
direct and open opposition to the Church's doctrine 
and disciplinary code. Misled by the caprices of his 
own imagination, he became more and more subject 
to fits of melancholy and discouragement, so that, as 
he says, he even "hated God and wished that he had 
never been born." He would have done well had he 
remembered the good and sensible advice which 
Staupitz, his superior, gave when he said to him: 
"Enough, my son: you speak of sin, but know not 
what sin is ; if you desire the assistance of God, do not 



60 The Facts About Luther 



act like a child any longer. God is not angry with you 
but you are angry with God/' The advice was cer- 
tainly required in his state of intense scrupulosity but 
it did not seem to have left any abiding impression on 
his mind. His morbid interior conflict banished all 
peace of soul. He was unhappy, not because he was a 
monk, but because, though a monk exteriorly, he 
never entered interiorly into the spirit of his Rule or 
of his Church. A reaction was inevitable and his mind, 
not accustomed to self-examination and self-control, 
went as far as possible in the opposite direction. From 
extreme timidity he passed to excessive rashness. 
Formerly he trusted too much in his own powers and 
wilful exertions. He perceives the absurdity and 
weakness of his self-reliant position and recedes there- 
from entirely despairing in its help. Then, going to 
another extreme, he throws himself too far upon God's 
mercy, so far, in fact, as to renounce even co-operation 
with God's grace and to expect salvation without any 
effort or action on his &wn part. Thus from one 
absurdity he passed to another with the utmost facility. 
He came by degrees to believe that by reason of in- 
herited sin, man was become totally depraved and 
possessed no liberty of the will. He then concluded 
that all human action whatever, even that which is 
directed towards good, being an emanation from our 
corrupt nature, is, in the sight of God, nothing more 
or less than deadly sin : therefore our actions have no 
influence on our salvation; we are saved "by faith 
alone without good works/' He thought that "faith in 
Christ makes His merits our possession, envelops us 
in the garb of righteousness, which our guilt and sin- 
fulness hide, and supplies in abundance every defect 
of human righteousness." 

It has long been considered amongst the ill-informed 
that Luther inaugurated his movement against the 
Church of his forefathers from a desire of reform. 
This view-point is not borne out by the facts in the 
case. External causes played little or no part in his 
change of religion. The impelling motive centered in 
his own nature, which demanded a teaching able to 



Luther Before His Defection 



61 



assure his tormented soul of pardon of sin and ulti- 
mate salvation. Troubled with doubts as to his voca- 
tion and oppressed by "violent movements of hatred, 
envy, quarrelsomeness and pride," his singular self- 
esteem and self-reliance would not suffer him to make 
intelligent and enlightened use of the remedies most ef- 
fectual for the cure of his abnormal spiritual maladies. 
Wedded to his own opinions and refusing to hear the 
voice of God in Catholic direction, his temptations, 
doubts, and fears increased, as might be expected, un- 
til they drove him to despair of salvation and "plagued 
him with the spirit of sorrow." Tortured by the 
melancholy thoughts of predestination, he failed to 
humble himself in childlike, trustful prayer to find a 
way out of his spiritual troubles. He spurned the use 
of the approved methods of mastering spiritual dif- 
ficulties, and even considered these as worthless to 
help in acquiring sanctity and holiness of life. Instead 
of overcoming such sentiments he allowed them to 
develop to such an extent that an apostate spirit mas- 
tered him. Dissatisfied with the ordinary means of 
conquering self, he vainly thought he would find the 
peace of conscience he sorely needed by following his 
own conceptions and setting up a teaching of his own 
as against the traditional methods and approved theol- 
ogy of the ancient time-honored Catholic Church. 

Led on by a spirit that was not of God, he formu- 
lated and proclaimed the blasphemous pronounce- 
ment that the Catholic Church was unable by her 
teaching and sacramental system to reconcile souls 
with God and bring comfort to those thirsting after 
salvation. From error to error he passed in quick 
succession until we find him unblushingly upholding 
the utter corruption of human nature because of origi- 
nal sin, denying the freedom of the will, defending the 
rights of reason against dogmatic authority and de- 
claring that "reason speaks nothing but madness and 
foolishness." These and many other erroneous teach- 
ings, as we shall see further on, bothered him until he 
severed his connection with the Catholic Church and 
without credentials inaugurated a system of religion 



62 The Facts About Luther 



of his own making wherein he would be free to preach 

his own individual conceptions, which he thought would 
bring peace and happiness and comfort to struggling 
souls, but which ended, as sad experience attests, in 
conflicts, misery and despair. Was this the work of 
God or the work of an enemy of God? Was this 
obedience to the manifest will of God in the sanctifica- 
tion of souls or was it rebellion m ugliest form and 
with the saddest consequences? Was it reformation 
or was it deformation? 

From out the vast number whom the enemy of man 
raised up to invent heresies, which St. Cyprian says, 
"destroy faith and divide unity/' not one, or all to- 
gether, ever equalled or surpassed Martin Luther in 
the wide range of his errors, the ferocity with which 
he promulgated them and the harm he did in leading 
souls away from the Church, the fountain of ever- 
lasting truth. The heresies of Sabellius, Arius, Pel- 
agius and other rebellious men were insignificant as 
compared with those Luther formulated and pro- 
claimed four hundred years ago and which unfortun- 
ately have ever since done service against the Church 
of the living God. In Luther most, if not all, former 
heresies meet, and reach their climax. To enumerate 
fully all the wicked, false and perverse teachings of 
the arch-heretic would require a volume many times 
larger than the Bible, and every one of the lies and 
falsehoods that have been used against the Catholic 
Church may be traced back to him as to their original 
formulator. When the Protestant ranks were united 
in a solid phalanx against the Mother Church, a lie 
that passed current bearing Luther's mark was good 
coin everywhere in heretical circles. 

To get some idea of the character and extent of the 
false and pernicious teaching advanced by Luther, it 
would be necessary to spend a life-time in the perusal 
of his numerous works. Amongst those that have come 
down to us are his Forty One propositions, which were 
condemned by Leo X. in his bull Exurge Domine^ 
published in 1520 and found in the Bullarium of 
Leo X. (Constit. 40), in Cochlaeus' accouirtx>f Luther's 



Luther Before His Defection 63 



proceedings and in Bernini's Works. Besides the er- 
rors enumerated in the Bull of Leo X. there are a vast 
number of others mentioned and set forth clearly by- 
Noel, Alexander, and Gotti, who made a special study 
of the various writings of Luther, particularly his 
treatises, "De Indulgentiis," "De Reformatione," 
"Respon. ad lib. Catharini," "De Captivitate Babilon- 
ica," "Contra Latomum," "De Missa privata," "Contra 
Episc. Ordinem," "Contra Henricum VIII, Regem," 
"Novi Testamenti Translatio," "De formula Missse et 
Cornmunionis," "Ad Waldenses," "Contra Carlos- 
tadium," "De Servo Arbitrio," "Contra Anabaptistas," 
etc. In all these works and in some others printed in 
Wittenberg, we find the novel and arbitrary teachings 
he invented to displace, if possible, the doctrines which 
the Church had inherited from Christ and His Apostles. 
There may be seen how the primitive Christian teach- 
ing underwent, under his direction, a fundamental 
alteration in its most essential parts, and there also 
may be found the principles he laid down with an ar- 
rogance as blasphemous as it was unreasonable, for 
the subversion and destruction of all moral and civil 
order. The brazen boldness which appears on almost 
every page of works written to ventilate his per- 
nicious religious and moral views, has never been 
equalled before or since by any other enemy of the 
Church of God. 

The Catholic Church knows that heresies must needs 
arise and whilst she pities their formulators and pro- 
moters she is always patient and forbearing. She 
knows their work is the work of man and like him 
destined to die. They do harm for a time. They mis- 
lead, injure and persecute while they last, but triumph 
they never shall. Built upon the dissolving nightmares 
of unhappy visionaries, their false teaching courts fail- 
ure and disaster. Men, gradually through prayer and 
study, grow wise to the tactics of "false teachers" and 
organizers of "sects of perdition," and learn to beware 
of them, as Christ directed, for they are ranked, as St. 
Paul tells, amongst "murderers and idolaters" "who 
shall not possess the Kingdom of God." A vulgar 



64 The Facts About Luther 



man-made form of belief can never satisfy for- long the 
aspirations, needs, and foreshadowings of those who 
are in real earnest in their search for the true religion, 
which, by divine arrangement, was made independent 
of the powers of the world, and destined to continue 
its saving mission in spite of all opposition. 

The Church of Jesus Christ can never be displaced 
by any or all systems of human manufacture, for they 
always bear on their face the stamp of error and 
falsehood. Built on the everlasting granite of the 
Petrine rock, one pebble of whose power the combined 
ages and nations have not succeeded in knocking from 
its surface, the Church has triumphed everywhere and 
at all times over error and its abettors. Christ said in 
the creation of the Church that "the gates of Hell will 
not prevail against her/' and s.o speaks He every hour 
in her preservation. She cannot, therefore, perish and 
go down before the work "of sects of perdition" as 
St. Paul calls the organizations of religious revolution- 
ists and anarchists. The Catholic Church is God's 
work and His protecting power will ever preserve her 
unshaken and immovable to tell men till the last mo- 
ment of time what they must believe and what they 
must do to gain eternal happiness. 



CHAPTER III. 



Luther and Indulgences. 

LUTHER for some little time before his breach with 
the Church seemed to forget the sacred obligation 
he was under by reason of his doctorate to preserve 
Catholic orthodoxy and never in the least to de- 
part therefrom. A great change was, discernible in 
his spiritual v life. By degrees he grew indifferent to 
the performance of good works and failed to meet the 
aims and to follow the rules of monastic discipline. 
Neglecting to spiritualize his life by the usual and 
approved exercises of piety, his faith naturally weak- 
ened and grew cold and, as might be expected in such 
a dangerous state, he came little by little to antago- 
nize the Church's teachings. Whether he was con- 
scious or not of the sad condition of both soul and in- 
tellect by reason of the growing omission of his spiri- 
tual duties, he began unfortunately to find fault with 
certain beliefs, customs and conditions of the Church 
which happened to meet with his displeasure. As time 
went on, he grew bolder in his fault-finding and be- 
came more unduly critical and contentious. Carried 
away by pride, and stimulated by the applause his 
singular methods won for him among those who longed 
to be freed from the requirements of Christianity, he 
began to denounce what he called the "buffoonery" of 
contemporary theologians, and conceiving himself to be 
the master mind of all, he imagined that he was 
especially fitted to bring about a reformation of the 
ancient discipline of the Church and effect a sweeping 
change in her consecrated, fixed and accepted teach- 
ings. The course he was pursuing was characteristic 
of the man. As Dungersheim says : "He had always 
been a quarrelsome man in his way and habits," and, 
as his pupil Oldecop declares, "he never learnt to live 
at peace and being disputatious, he was always desirous 
of coming off victor in differences of opinion and liked 
to stir up strife." 



66 The Facts About Luther 



His revolutionary methods and daring innovations 
were fast pushing him toward the path of error. To 
careful observers he was becoming an object of sus- 
picion and among the learned of the time he was 
gradually losing caste and acquiring a bad name for 
himself on account of the growing opposition of his 
views to those of the Church of his forefathers. "As 
early as 15 15," Mathesius, his pupil and first bio- 
grapher, tells us, "he was already called a heretic." 
His Rector, the famous Dr. Pollich, aware of his novel 
and dangerous pronouncements, is said to have given 
his estimate of the young professor in these words: 
'This monk has deep eyes ; he has strange fancies and 
will no doubt later on disturb the teachings prevalent 
at the Universities." Was this great scholar a prophet? 
Whether he was or not matters little, but of one thing 
we are certain, events justified the estimate formed 
of him. 

Luther on account of a lack of a solid systematic 
theological training, as well as by reason of the con- 
fusion of his mind in dealing with grave questions, 
together with a deficiency in real Catholic feeling, was 
preparing himself for revolt. He needed only time 
and opportunity and stubborn resolve to broach openly 
and give wide publicity to the strange and peculiar 
doctrinal views which he had secretly formed and 
which eventually became the fundamental articles of 
his new system of religion. Knowingly or unknow- 
ingly, he was preparing himself to sever his connec- 
tions with the Church of his forefathers. His inward 
falling away from the graces of his priestly state and 
his trifling with most serious and sacred questions of 
Divine faith, combined with the restless condition of 
his mind and attachment to his own ideas, were dis- 
posing and fitting him for a great public outbreak 
when he would give his novel and erroneous teachings 
to the world. 

A favorable opportunity for airing his new-fangled 
notions presented itself when John Tetzel, the famous 
Dominican friar, was actively and zealously engaged 
in preaching the Indulgence granted by Pope Leo X. 



Luther and Indulgences 



67 



for the construction of St. Peter's Church in Rome. 
This distinguished preacher no doubt would have 
remained but little known in history were it not- for 
the epoch-making event in which he and Luther figured 
so conspicuously. Many^years later Luther in refer- 
ring to the struggle which created such a great stir 
in the world, declared that he was drawn by force into 
the famous controversy and called forth unwillingly 
from his professorial duties into the arena of public 
life. He says : "I was completly dead to the world 
till God deemed the time had come ; then Squire Tetzel 
excited me with the Indulgence and Doctor Staupitz 
spurred me on against the Pope/' ("Colloquia," ed. 
Bindseil, 3, p. 188.) This statement, with its nasty 
fling at his opponent, was made years after the oc- 
curence when the circumstances appeared to him very 
different from what they really were, as we shall dis- 
cover later on. Let us now pass on to the occasion 
which led to Luther's encounter with Tetzel. ~ 

Julius II. had it brought under his notice that the 
ancient Basilica of St. Peter, which had been given to 
the Church by the Emperor Constantine, * was now 
falling into decay. He determined to use the oppor- 
tunity and to employ all the architectural talent of that 
brilliant period, in order to erect a new Basilica in its 
place, which by its magnificence should be worthy of 
its position as the memorial of the great Apostle and 
the central church of the Catholic world. Julius II. 
commenced the work and devoted large sums to its 
accomplishment. These, however, were far from suf- 
ficient, and it became evident that the cost of a build- 
ing of such magnitude could be defrayed only by a 
successful appeal to the piety of the Christian world. 
Accordingly, Leo X., the successor of Julius, who died 
in 15 13, proclaimed an Indulgence; that is to say, he 
granted an Indulgence of a most simple kind to all, 
wherever they might be, who would contribute ac- 
cording to their means towards the expenses of the 
rising edifice. 

This is not the place for a detailed exposition of the 
Catholic doctrine of Indulgence, but it is necessary that 



68 The Facts About Luther 



the reader should bear in mind the official meaning of 
the term and what it represents. The word Indulgence 
in the mind of the Church signifies favor, remission or 
commutation. This meaning has been gradually changed 
by non-Catholics to convey the sense of unlawful 
gratification and of free scope to the passions. On this 
account, it happens that when some ignorant or preju- 
diced persons hear of the Church granting an Indul- 
gence, the idea of license to commit sin is at once pre- 
sented to their minds. This is far from the truth, for an 
Indulgence, as may be seen by a glance at any Catholic 
handbook of theology, is a total or partial remission 
of the temporal punishments which remain due to sin, 
after the guilt and eternal punishment have been for- 
given. There are three things to be considered in 
every deadly sin: first, its guilt; second, its eternal; 
and third, its temporal punishment. The first and 
second are forgiven by the sacraments of baptism and 
penance, as the ordinary channels of pardon ; the third 
is expiated by our sufferings, and pur penances, or by 
remission or commutation through an Indulgence. 

An Indulgence, therefore, has, properly speaking, 
nothing to do with the guilt of, and the eternal punish- 
ment due to, mortal sin, nor does an Indulgence forgive 
venial sin. Much less is it a permission for the com- 
mission of future sins, as the adversaries of the Church 
have calumniously asserted. An Indulgence regards 
temporal punishment only. Many non-Catholics do 
not sufficiently understand the nature of an Indulgence 
and hence arises their misrepresentation of the doc- 
trine. Many imagine that it forgives sin, and many 
more, that it is a permission to sin. They represent a 
man who gains a full or plenary Indulgence, as one 
who for a certain sum of money, to be given to the 
pope, bishop, or priest, obtains absolution from all his 
crimes, without any sorrow or repentance of heart, 
and, at the same time, a kind of permit to sin as much 
as he pleases in the future. Once more, therefore, 
an Indulgence has nothing whatever to do with the 
guilt of past sins, nor their eternal punishment, much 
less with sins to come. And if some of the bulls or 



Luther and Indulgences 



69 



briefs, regarding the grant of Indulgences, speak in that 
strain, they are either falsified by our enemies, or else 
must be understood in the only Catholic sense, namely, 
the remission of the temporal punishments which sin 
deserves. Indeed, how could any honest and sensible 
man think the Church so silly as to contradict herself 
on this score? She teaches most positively that in 
order to obtain the pardon of sins committed after 
baptism, the only ordinary means instituted by Jesus 
Christ is the Sacrament of Penance; and now, she is 
made to say, by the mouth and pen of our adversaries, 
that the Sacrament of Penance is by no means the 
only ordinary means, but that Indulgences, without any 
repentance whatsoever, will answer just as well. She 
says in her doctrine on confession that sorrow for sin, 
including a firm purpose of amendment, so firm that 
one should be resolved to die rather than offend Al- 
mighty God by any deadly sin, is an absolutely neces- 
sary condition of pardon for sin; and in her doctrine 
on Indulgences she is made to say, by our adversaries, 
that any one can, on paying a certain sum of money, 
purchase not only pardon for sins already committed, 
but for such as he has a mind to commit in future. It 
is important to keep in mind this explanation of an 
Indulgence as given by the Church in order to be 
guarded against those who maliciously construe her 
teaching to convey the sense of unlawful gratification 
and of free scope to the passions. 

To say that an Indulgence gives a license to commit 
sin for money is a falsehood cut out of whole cloth. 
Non-Catholics who offer objections to the Church's 
idea of Indulgences should be careful as to how they 
express themselves on the question for they profess to 
believe that all that the greatest sinners have to do to 
receive full pardon and plenary Indulgence for all their 
sins, past, present, and future, is to have faith. Such 
is the omnipotence attributed to an act by those who 
believe in "justification by faith- alone." What hypoc- 
risy to roll up the whites of one's eyes in a pretence 
of. holy horror at the Catholic doctrine of Indulgences, 
which is severity itself compared with their sweeping 



70 The Facts About Luther 



act of faith which alone suffices to wash all a mans 
sins away, and put him at once, without penance or 
purgatory, into the company of the angels in heaven. 

Now what we have to consider is whether it be true 
that the system of Indulgences into contact with which 
Luther was brought, differed in any essential par- 
ticulars from our modern system. This is necessary, 
because the charge brought against the Catholic 
Church as justifying Luther's revolt from her obedi- 
ence was, in its original and ancient form, that Indul- 
gences were permissions to commit sin, or at least 
pretended remissions of the guilt of sin, sold in the 
most barefaced way, over the counter, so to speak, for 
sums of money, amidst degrading accompaniments. 
We have partially succeeded in convincing modern and 
more enlightened non-Catholics that this is by no 
means a true account of our teaching and have caused 
them to remodel the charge, which, as it nowadays 
mostly runs, is that we have altered our system from 
what it was in the days of Luther; that then it cer- 
tainly pretended to be a sale of forgiveness for money, 
but that now, in deference to the outcry against such 
an enormity, we have revised it and cast it into a more 
suitable form. This, however, is not the fact. Any 
enlightened inquirer after truth can easily discover 
that in offering an Indulgence in return for alms to a 
good work Leo X. was acting in no way differently 
from the practice of the Church before or since his 
time. It has always been the right and the privilege 
of the Pope not only to grant and proclaim In- 
dulgences, but also, in dispensing these spiritual favors 
to stimulate and reward charitable contributions, to 
designate, if he so pleases, some particular object to 
which they may be applied, as Leo X. did to carry on 
the sacred and splendid work of completing the erec- 
tion of St. Peter's Basilica which "of temples old or 
altars new" now stands alone in "majesty and beauty 
with nothing like to it, worthiest of God, the holy and 
true." So far, then, we have discovered no impropriety 
in the Pope's action. 

The bull which Leo X. issued, granting a plenary 



Luther and Indulgences 



71 



Indulgence to all Christendom, reached Germany in 
1515. For the preaching of this Indulgence in Ger- 
many that country was divided into three parts, with 
only one of which we need to concern ourselves. For 
the district comprising the whole of Saxony and 
Brandenburg this commission was divided between the 
guardian of the Franciscans of Mentz and Albert of 
Brandenburg, the newly installed archbishop of the 
diocese. But the guardian of the Franciscans declin- 
ing to act, the entire commission passed into the hands 
of the archbishop, whose office it was to see that the 
Indulgence was effectually made known in his district 
and to collect the alms of the pious donors. Albert was 
a young man of distinguished family, only twenty-four 
at the time of his appointment. He was under the 
usual obligation of paying the fees for his pallium, 
which amounted to no less a sum than thirty thousand 
gold florins. That there should have been such fee r 
is quite intelligible, for the Holy See with its vast staff 
of officials for the conduct of a world-wide business 
must be supported, and it is right that those for whose 
benefit they 'are established should contribute to their 
upkeep. As it w r as not customary for the archbishops 
to pay the fees for the pallium out of their private 
sources, they had to be levied on the faithful of the 
diocese. But this had been done twice within ten years 
for the immediate predecessors of Albert of Branden- 
burg, Archbishops Berthold and Uriel. To raise the 
sum a third time within a short interval seemed im- 
possible without assistance. Wherefore, in order to 
afford relief to his flock, Archbishop Albert, by repre- 
senting to the Pope the greatness of the crushing 
burdens on the revenues of the See, obtained leave to 
retain a portion of the proceeds of the papal indulgence 
in his province toward the payment of his debt. This 
fact suffices, in Dr. Grone's opinion, to clear the arch- 
bishop from the reproach of avarice cast at him by 
Protestant writers, who have also not failed to impute 
all sorts of unworthy motives to him for making choice 
of the Dominican, John Tetzel, as his chief sub-com- 
missioner, or quaestor, in preaching the Indulgence. 



72 



The Facts About Luther 



Archbishop Albert proceeded with the greatest 
caution in promulgating the Indulgence. He issued a 
long document on the occasion and in it he first pre- 
scribes to the preachers and their assistants the mode 
in which they are to conduct themselves and explains 
very lucidly the character and provisions of the In- 
dulgence. In the second place he points out the nature 
of the grace, that is, the spiritual benefits offered. Of 
these the first is a "Plenary Indulgence," or plenary 
remission of all temporal punishment due to sin by 
which the pains of Purgatory are fully forgiven and 
blotted out. The term "plenary remission of sin" 
should be remarked, as it is on such a phrase that 
those fix who strive to make out that an Indulgence is 
a forgiveness of the guilt of sin. But the phrase is 
usual in grants of Indulgence even to this day, and 
means, as the expository clause just given distinctly 
'declares, a remission of the sin as regards all its tem- 
poral punishment. In such a remission a sacramental 
absolution is presupposed as having taken away the 
guilt and eternal punishment, and it is because, by 
supervening on this, the Indulgence takes away like- 
wise all the temporal punishment, that is called a 
"plenary remission of sins." In the third place the 
Instruction of the archbishop lays down the condi- 
tions for gaining the Plenary Indulgence. "Although," 
it says, "nothing can be given in exchange which will 
be a worthy equivalent for so great a favor, the gift 
and grace of God being priceless, still that the faithful 
may be the more readily invited to receive it, let them, 
after having first made a contrite confession, or at 
least having the intention of* so doing at the proper 
time, visit at least seven churches assigned for this 
purpose and in each say devoutly five Our Fathers and 
Hail Marys in honor of the Five Wounds of Jesus 
Christ, by which our redemption was wrought ; or else 
one Miserere, to obtain pardon for sins." The italicized 
clause is to be specially noticed, as proving conclusively 
that there was no thought of granting absolution of 
guilt otherwise than through the Sacrament of Pen- 
ance. Another condition for the Indulgence was the 



Luther and Indulgences 



73 



contribution towards the building expenses of St. 
Peter's, and the archbishop proceeds to prescribe a 
suitable amount according to the rank and means of 
the contributors. Of the poor he added specially that 
"those who have no money must supply by their 
prayers and fasts, since the Kingdom of Heaven 
should be made open to the poor as much as to the 
rich." The scale of offerings or donations laid down 
in the Instruction disproves the buying and selling 
theory. If it were true that Indulgences were offered 
as goods in the market, to be bought and sold, the 
assessments should have been uniform for all. The 
code of prices disappears, and that of contributions 
comes in, when such a scale of assignments made out 
according to the rank and means of the donors is borne 
in mind. Besides, as we have seen, the notion of price 
is expressly repudiated in the archbishop's instruc- 
tions. 

There are some other points covered in the Instruc- 
tion, such as permissions to choose a confessor and 
grants to the priest selected of ample faculties to ab- 
solve from censures, etc., but it is not necessary to 
detail these as they have little bearing on the Indul- 
gence controversy. A careful examination of Albert's 
Instruction to the preachers of the Indulgence will 
show that there is not a thought in it which the Church 
at the present day would hesitate to subscribe. 

"We can see now," as Fr. Smith says, "that this 
historical Indulgence, at all events in the form in which 
it was conceived by Leo X. and by his Commissioner, 
Albert of Brandenburg, did not differ in kind, and 
hardly in its circumstances, from those to which w;e 
are accustomed at present. We can see, too, that the 
intention was to make the preaching of the Indulgence 
a sort of 'mission/ as we should now term it, the 
people being stirred up by special sermons, prayers 
and devotions during the period of one or two weeks, 
to take seriosly to heart the affair of their souls, and 
to make a good Confession and Communion. Evidently 
the aim was to associate the erection of a church which 
was to be the head of all Churches with a grand re- 



74 The Facts About Luther 



ligious awakening throughout the world. The Pope, 
therefore, and his Commissioners must be acquitted of 
the blame which the attacks of Luther have heaped 
upon them and this is the point of principal importance 
which we have desired to prove." 

Archbishop Albert was anxious to promote, as much 
as possible, the success of the pious undertaking. To 
help him to effect this great end, he selected John 
Tetzel, a Dominican friar, to whom he entrusted the 
actual preaching of the Indulgence, because he con- 
sidered him the likeliest person he knew of on account 
of his eminent learning, piety and zeal in the cause of 
the Church and the welfare of the Holy See to stir up 
the religious fervor and devotion of the people. He 
knew that Tetzel had much experience and an uninter- 
ruptedly successful career as an Indulgence preacher 
during the two previous decades. He knew, moreover, 
that he enjoyed the renown of being one of the most 
popular and. eloquent preachers then in Germany. His 
character, temperament, and ability eminently fitted 
him to attract large congregations to hear the word of 
God, and to move them to contribute generously to the 
object advocated. The archbishop's appointment of 
Tetzel as his sub-commissioner is tantamount to a 
refutation of all the calumnies heaped upon him by his 
enemies, who without foundation alleged he disregard- 
ed utterly the injunctions given him and perverted the 
good purpose of the Indulgence into a downright 
scandal. 

Tetzel, on the confirmation of his appointment, en- 
tered on his duties with his accustomed energy, activ- 
ity, and zeal. What he announced everywhere through- 
out his district and on all occasions to his hearers, was 
in the main, be it remembered, the same doctrine as 
Luther quite clearly and correctly set forth regarding- 
indulgences in a sermon on the subject which he 
preached in 1516. He, like all theologians before and 
since his day, was careful to point out, as Grisar re- 
marks, "that an Indulgence was to be considered merely 
as a remission of the temporal punishment due to sin, 
but not of the actual guilt of sin. He declared, quite 



Luther and Indulgences 



75 



rightly, that the erection of the Church of St. Peter was 
a matter of common interest to the whole Christian 
world, and that the donations toward it were to be 
looked upon as part of the pious undertakings and good 
works which were always required by the Church as 
one of the conditions for gaining an Indulgence. At 
the same time, in accordance with the teaching and 
practice of the Church, he demanded of all, as an es- 
sential preparation for the Indulgence, conversion and 
change of heart together with a good confession." 
(Grisar I, p. 328 and 328.) 

Towards the end of 15 17, Tetzel, after having 
preached the Indulgence with signal success at Leipsic, 
Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Berlin and other places, ar- 
rived at Juterbock, a small town, only a few miles 
distant from Wittenberg. Into Wittenberg itself Tetzel 
did not enter, but the inhabitants, having heard of the 
reputation of the popular preacher, went off in great 
numbers to listen to his wonderful sermons. The very 
students in the new University, where Luther was one 
of the professors, deserted the lecture-halls to hear the 
celebrated friar. The enthusiastic reception accorded 
to Tetzel augured well for the success of his mission. 
Some of those who used to frequent Luther's confes- 
sional were among the crowds who went to Juterbock 
and they came back, it was said, refusing to give up 
their sins. When Luther exhorted and rebuked them, 
they showed him the Indulgences they had received 
from Tetzel and told him they had bought permission 
to continue in their sins, whilst nevertheless assured 
of immunity from guilt and punishment. This is the 
traditional story that has for long done service against 
the CTfurch, but as Fr. Smith aptly remarks, "a very 
decisive argument entitles us to dismiss it at once. 
Luther, as we are about to see, presently framed his 
indictment against Tetzel and it does not, remember, 
contain a word of suggestion that. the latter undertook 
to forgive future sins. Presumedly what happened 
was much more simple. Those who were wont to at- 
tend Luther's confessional at Wittenberg, on this oc- 
casion went to the neighboring town to gain the In- 



76 



The Facts About Luther 



diligence. If Luther was already set against the doc- 
trine of Indulgences, the natural effect of such an in- 
cident would be to stir the bile of so excitable a person, 
and that this was in reality his doctrinal position at the 
time is clear from a sermon which he forthwith de- 
livered at the Castle Church. For in it he denounced 
not only Tetzel, but the formalism into which the sys- 
tem of Indulgences had degenerated, as well as the 
very doctrine itself which the Catholic Church holds 
still as she ever has held. It cannot be proved from 
Scripture, he says, that Divine Justice demands of the 
sinner any other penance or satisfaction save reforma- 
tion of heart. He denied that satisfaction was part of 
the sacrament of penance. He denied that anything 
beyond contrition was needed for the remission of sin. 
This denial of temporal punishment for sin and the 
necessity of it as satisfaction for sin of course left no 
place for any Indulgence or commutation of it. As 
he denied the Indulgence to be of any avail to the liv- 
ing, he also declared it to be fruitless when applied to 
the dead. He maintained that even after receiving the 
sacrament of penance, the gaining of an Indulgence 
plunged the Christian back into the filth of his sin. 
With tirades against the schoolmen, he urged his hear- 
ers to disregard Indulgences, and give any alms they 
had to spare, not to the building of St. Peter's, but to 
the poor." The famous sermon that opened the war 
on the Church is a specimen of Luther's style. There 
is no accurate reasoning, no grasp of the subject, but 
plenty of violent declamation. Tetzel's reply was the 
plain, distinct utterance of a theologian. Luther's 
retort was characteristic: "I laugh at your words as 
I do at the braying of an ass; instead of water I rec- 
ommend to you the juice of the grape; and instead of 
fire, inhale, my friend, the smell of a roast goose. I am 
at Wittenberg. I, Doctor Martin Luther, make it 
known to all inquisitors of the faith, bullies and rock- 
splitters, that I enjoy here abundant hospitality, an 
open house, a well-supplied table, and marked atten- 
tion; thanks to the liberality of our duke and prince, 
the Elector of Saxony." 



Luther and Indulgences 



77 



Can any man believe such a one to be raised up by- 
God to guide men in the way of salvation? 

This attack on the Indulgence-preacher and the doc- 
trine of Indulgences was in a short time afterwards 
followed up by a document in which Luther formulated 
his new creed and embodied his changed view-points 
and singular opinions. Although he had promised his 
bishop, who was aware? of his peculiar views, that he 
would npt publish for general notice his new-fangled 
notions on Indulgences, Luther, with a hypocrisy and 
instability that does not generally rank as a m^rk of 
sanctity or divine mission, nevertheless did publish 
them, for forthwith he prevailed on the porter of his 
monastery to affix on the doors of the Castle church 
his famous Theses, ninety-five in number, mostly bear- 
ing on Indulgences, but scarcely one raising a solid 
objection. This occurred on the eve of All Saints 15 17, 
when the Castle church began the celebration of its 
titular feast. The yearly commemorative services 
naturally drew a vast concourse of devout worshippers. 
Time and place lent themselves to a wide publication 
of the Saxon monk's novel doctrines. Beyond this 
challenge to all opposers to meet him in the arena of 
theological disputation, there was nothing extraordi- 
nary in the incident. When we consider that the custom 
of publicly challenging scholars to learned disputations 
was in accordance with the custom of the times, we 
fail to find in the nailing of his Theses to the church 
notice-boards that act of "exceptional" and "heroic 
courage" over which many of his friends are still wont 
to go into ecstacy, nor do we think that the man him- 
self was in the least conscious at the time how far the 
ball he set a rolling would develop into an avalanche. 
He was simply availing himself of a custom among 
scholars of those days to play a crafty game. Relying 
on his skill in debate, he looked forward to a victory 
over Tetzel and to an opening for commencing the war 
against some abuses he heard of connected with the 
preaching of the Indulgence. He was much disap- 
pointed that no one came forward to dispute the ques- 
tions he had raised, and he was much hurt to find his 



78 The Facts About Luther 



friends and intimates very silent about the matter. "The 
ninety-five sledge-hammer strokes delivered at the 
grossest ecclesiastical abuse of the age," as Lindsay, 
the non-Catholic writer, calls Luther's Theses, terrified 
nobody. They only emphasized the boldness and rash- 
ness of their author in abandoning teachings he once 
firmly held and in attacking the doctrines of a world- 
wide institution like the Catholic Church. 

The well-instructed Catholic who examines Luther's 
theses will discover at once some erroneous, some in- 
consistent with others, some merely satirical cuts at the 
Holy See, some are merely puerile. For the most part 
they are full of contradictions and obscurities, and 
lack precision in expression to such an extent as to 
show lamentable deficiency in theological training. 
Lindsay, a non-Catholic and an admirer of Luther, 
declares rightly; "The Theses are not a reasoned 
treatise;" and Beard, another non-Catholic, says: 
"They impress the reader as thrown together somewhat 
in haste rather than showing carefully digested thought 
and deliberate theological intention ; they bear him out 
one moment into the audacity of rebellion and then 
carry him back to the obedience of conformity." 
(Beard 218, 219.) 

The tone in which the Theses were written indicates 
that they were not, as he declared, advanced as tenta- 
tive propositions, but that they were considered by 
their author as settled beforehand and irrefutable. In 
a letter he wrote at this time to the Bishop of Branden- 
burg he declared his absolute submission and his readi- 
ness to follow the Catholic Church in everything, but, 
at the same time, he wanted it to be known quite clearly 
that, "in his opinion nothing could be advanced against 
his theses, neither from Holy Scripture, Catholic Doc- 
trine or Canon Law, with the exception of the utter- 
ances of some few canonists, who spoke without proofs 
and of some of the scholastic Doctors who cherished 
similar views, but who also were unable to demonstrate 
anything." Though his language in some of the theses 
is comparatively guarded he, nevertheless, puts for- 
ward certain opinions which show plainly enough that 



Luther and Indulgences 



79 



he means to go straight into combat with the Catholic 
Church. Many of the theses, says Fr. Grisar, (Vol. I, 
p. 331) "from the theological point of view, go far 
beyond a mere opposition to the abuse of Indulgencs. 
Luther, stimulated by contradiction, had, to some ex- 
tent, altered his previous views on the nature of In- 
dulgences and brought them more into touch with the 
fundamental principles of his erroneous theology." 

"A practical renunciation of Indulgences, as it had 
been held up to that time, is to be found in the theses, 
where Luther states that Indulgences have no value 
in God's sight, but are merely to be regarded as the 
remission by the Church of the canonical punishment. 
(Theses 5, 20, 21, etc.) This destroys the theological 
meaning of Indulgences, for they had always been 
considered as a remission of the temporal punishment 
of sin, but as a remission which held good before the 
Divine Judgement-seat (cp. Nos. 19, 20 and 21 of the 
41 propositions of Luther condemned in 1520). In 
some of the theses (58-60) Luther likewise attacks the 
generally accepted teaching with regard to the Church's 
treasury of grace, on which Indulgences are based. 
Erroneous views concerning the state of purgation of 
the departed occur in some of the propositions (18, 19, 
29). Others appear to contain what is theologically 
incorrect and connected with his opinion regarding 
grace and justification; this opinion is not, however, 
clearly set forth in the list of theses." 

"Many of the statements are irritating, insulting and 
cynical observations on Indulgences in general, no dis- 
tinction being made between what was good and what 
was perverted. Thus, for example, Thesis 66 de- 
clares "the treasures of Indulgences" to be simply nets 
"in which the wealth of mankind is caught." Others 
again scoff and mock at the authority of the Church, 
as, for example, Thesis 86, "Why does not the Pope, 
who is as rich as Croesus, build St. Peter's with his 
own money, rather than with that of poor Christians?" 
Now the Pope was not building a private chapel for 
himself, but a basilica for the whole Christian world. 
Another thesis declared : "Christians should be taught 



80 The Facts About Luther 



that he who gives to the poor or assists the needy, does 
better than he who purchases Indulgences." It was 
the old argument of the traitor Judas, who asked: 
"Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred 
pence and given to the poor? Now he said this not 
because he cared for the poor." John XII, 5, 6. 

This brief sketch of Luther's theses gives the reader 
a slight conception of their nature, aim and scope. 
Ostensibly they were levelled against the alleged abuses 
of the papal Indulgences, but attacks on the doctrine 
itself, as well as on the authority of the Pope were so 
insidiously and maliciously intermingled therein, that 
it was evident to the discerning that they were not 
proposed, as he claimed, "out of love and zeal for the 
ascertaining of the truth." 

'At first many of the learned of the day were in- 
clined to regard Luther's challenge as one of the petty 
monastic intellectual squabbles which Germany fre- 
quently produced. Tetzel, however, did not consider 
the matter as a mere academic dispute, as Luther al- 
leged, for "defining and elucidating truth." With his 
clear mind he saw plainly that the discussion which 
Luther wished to arouse involved a deep and signifi- 
cant attack covertly made against the whole peniten- 
tial system of the Church, its teaching, its practice, 
and its authority. He recognized, moreover, the ex- 
tremes Luther would be driven to by his false princi- 
ples and the fatal results they were bound to produce 
on the masses. In the tone of a prophet he declared 
that many, on account of Luther's novel opinions, 
would contemn the authority and power of the Pope 
and the Roman See, would intermit the works of 
sacramental satisfaction, would no longer believe their 
pastors and teachers, but would explain, every one 
for himself, the Sacred Scriptures according to private 
fancy and whim and believe just what they might 
choose, to the great detriment of souls throughout 
Christendom, and the integrity of the Christian deposit 
of faith. 

Luther's Theses were so pointedly directed against 
the doctrine of Indulgences and against the preachers, 



Luther and Indulgences 81 



that it was impossible for Tetzel to pass them over in 
silence. However, before taking action on so critical 
an occasion he sought the counsel of his archbishop 
and of his old friend and former professor, Dr. Wim- 
pina. They directed him to reply to Luther's ninety- 
five theses; and presently there appeared a set, or 
rather two sets of theses, Anti-theses they were called ; 
one set of One Hundred and Six Theses being a 
counter statement of the doctrine of Indulgences, the 
other of Fifty Theses on the Papal power to grant 
them. These theses were drawn up for Tetzel by his 
old professor and showed a thorough understanding 
of the doctrine of Indulgences. 

Tetzel assumed all responsibility for the propositions 
which in the clearest and most lucid manner set forth 
the true Catholic doctrine of Indulgences and of the 
absolute necessity of repentance, confession and satis- 
faction-required for the pardon of sin. These proposi- 
tions are so forcible that we do not know where a 
theologian could go for a more satisfying defence of 
Indulgences against current Protestant difficulties. 
They affirmed that, though an Indulgence exempts the 
sinner from the vindicatory penalties of the church, 
it leaves him just as much bound as ever to submit to 
her medicinal ones; that it does not derogate from the 
merits of Christ, since its whole efficacy is due to the 
atoning passion of Christ; as also that the Pope has 
power only by means of suffrage to apply the benefits 
of an Indulgence to the souls in purgatory. Moreover, 
to say that the Pope cannot absolve the least venial 
sin is ^erroneous ; and equally so to deny that all vicars 
of Christ have the same power as Peter had; rather 
to assert that Peter, in the matter of Indulgences, had 
more power than they, is both heretical and blasphem- 
ous. 

The descriptions of the Indulgence-preacher as given 
by Hecht, Vogel, Hoffmann and other partisan writers 
are so full of obloquy founded on garbled quotations 
and falsified facts, that we are prepared to find in 
Tetzel's Theses the brutal, reckless and ignorant utter- 
ances of a buffoon. This is wide of the truth. What 



82 The Facts About Luther 



we do find is a calm and scientific theological state- 
ment, quite remarkable for its force and lucidity. His 
Theses are a luminous refutation of Luther's. They 
were so ably and brilliantly defended that about the 
end of April, 1518, the University of Frank fort-on-the- 
Oder, in recognition of the Dominican's learning, con- 
ferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. 

Tetzel thoroughly grasped both the nature and the 
complexity of his duties in the confutation of Luther's 
errors. Sobriety pervades every line of his proposi- 
tions and dignified self-repression marks all his utter- 
ances in the defense of truth. He was made the victim 
of many outrageous charges, but there is no trace of 
irritation in his speech. Without sarcasm and without 
pronouncing anything personally offensive to his op- 
ponent, he takes up the doctrinal points one after an- 
other and in serious, enlightened, and dignified lan- 
guage, as becomes the teacher of God's truth, explains 
and defends them with clearness, force, and directness. 
It is only as he draws to the close of his marvelous 
confutation that he deigns to notice the charges so un- 
justly flung at him. Then he refers to them in the 
fewest and most becoming words. He says: "For 
one who has never heard them to declare in public 
Theses that the Indulgence-preachers employ scandal- 
ous language before the people, and take up more time 
in explaining Indulgences than in expounding the 
Gospel, is to scatter lies picked up from others, to spread 
fictions in place of truths, and to show oneself light- 
minded and credulous; and is to fall into mischievous 
error." Here we think we have a true account of what 
happened. There were plenty of mischief-makers ta 
concoct scandalous stories if they were likely to be 
listened to and Luther had shown a readiness to wel- 
come this kind of slander, if not to add to it from his 
own imagination, and the poor Indulgence-preacher 
was the sufferer. 

Luther would not be silenced. The overweaning 
opinion he entertained of himself and of his own 
abilities made him set at naught every correct and ac- 
cepted exposition of the authority of tradition and the 



Luther and Indulgences 



83 



binding force of the teaching of the Church. The 
defenders of truth, no matter how learned or ap- 
proved they might be, were all despised when they 
were not in agreement with his newly formulated view- 
points on the question of Indulgences. He scoffed at 
all defense of the right and the true, and, as he said 
in his usual uncouth way, "he cared as little for it as 
for the braying of an ass." Such was the way in 
which he always endeavored to expose his adversaries, 
however exalted they might be in station or venerable 
for character and learning, to the low merriment of 
the people ; and it was a very important element in at- 
tracting the rabble to his side. The mob is ever ready 
to hail with delight any one who champions freedom 
from the requirements of Christianity. Some of his 
friends, among whom were learned theologians, saw 
with sorrow the downward course he was pursuing 
and begged him to discontinue his antagonism to the 
Church's teachings and practices. All their kindly ad- 
monitions were disregarded and he continued even 
more than before to reprobate, denounce and mis- 
represent the Church's doctrines and usages. 

It is interesting to note that later on, in looking back 
oyer the days that were gone, Luther had the audacity 
to state that "he hardly knew what an Indulgence was." 
In two different places in his pamphlet entitled Hans 
Worst, written about 1541, when he was blinded by 
rage against the Church, he solemnly declares that, 
"As truly as Our Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed me 
I did not know what an Indulgence was." This state- 
ment, notwithstanding the sacred affirmation with 
which he introduces it, is to say the least, of very 
doubtful veracity. To express himself in this way is, 
however, rather a poor compliment for a Professor 
and Doctor of Theology to pay to himself, nor can it 
be considered as very prudent, that a man should talk 
about and inveigh against things of which he confesses 
his ignorance. Indeed, he could hardly have meant 
what he said had he recalled at the moment the teach- 
ings and sermons of his earlier days, when he held and 
asserted with absolute conviction the mind of the 



84 The Facts About Luther 



Church on the doctrine of Indulgences. If Luther, 
however, was really ignorant of the matter he had 
plenty of opportunities of learning the unadulterated 
teaching of the Church. He could have been accom- 
modated within the walls of his own University. The 
nature of Indulgences was clearly defined in ordinary 
manuals for the use of the clergy, then in print, such 
as the "Discipulus de Eruditione Christi Fidelium," is- 
sued at Cologne in 1504, and many other learned theo- 
logical works. Luther, however, needed no enlighten- 
ment on the subject. He knew what an Indulgence 
was, its nature, its authority, its place in the spiritual 
order, and was quite familiar with its practice in the 
Church. He knew that an Indulgence was simply a 
remission in whole or in part, through the superabund- 
ant merits of Jesus Christ and His saints, of the tem- 
poral punishment due to God on account of sin after 
the guilt and eternal punishment have been remitted 
in the Sacrament of Penance. He knew that it gave 
no license to commit sin of any kind or in any form. 
He knew that no abuse could affect an Indulgence in 
itself, that an Indulgence is legitimate apart from an 
abuse, and that it would be a sacrilegious crime in any 
one whomsoever, from the Pope down to the most 
humble layman, to be concerned in buying or selling 
Indulgences. He knew that Indulgences were never 
bartered for money in Germany or elsewhere for sins 
yet to be committed. He knew they were not market- 
able commodities and that no traffic or sale of Indul- 
gences was ever authorized or countenanced by the 
authorities of the Church. He knew all this as well 
as any enlightened member of the Church in his day 
for he studied the whole ins-and-outs of the matter 
in his earlier career. His onslaught on Indulgences 
was not made from any lack of knowledge of their 
meaning and value. 

Luther had a purpose in view and all his attacks on 
Indulgences were intended only as a cloak to conceal 
the real scheme he nursed in his rebellious heart. He 
might, if he would, help to correct whatever wrong 
was noticeable at the time, but instead of aiding the 



Luther and Indulgences 



85 



cause of right, he wilfully and maliciously preferred 
to profit by the blunders of some imprudent underlings 
to advance his nefarious designs which aimed at noth- 
ing less than the weakening and eventual destruction 
of the power and authority of the Holy See. He now 
began adroitly enough to throw the blame of whatever 
irregularities existed on the doctrine itself, not only 
to make Indulgences odious, but indirectly to discredit 
the Pop£ who granted them. By a process of false 
reasoning he persuaded himself to think, "that Indul- 
gences are not of faith, because not taught in the Bible, 
not taught by Christ and His Apostles ; they emanate/' 
he said, "only from the Pope." He thought that this 
pronouncement, which included the exclusive value of 
the Bible as the rule of faith, was incontrovertible. 
He little dreamt, however, that in advancing this 
erroneous doctrine he was passing sentence on him- 
self as an apostate and a heretic. He must now be 
compelled to come out more in the open and declare 
himself more explicitly. To do this it was necessary 
to prove that besides the truths explicitly declared in 
Holy Writ there are other truths in the Church which 
its members are equally bound to believe and that they 
comprise all those doctrines relating to faith which 
are defined as such by the Apostolic See. 

Much of the greater part of the guffaws Luther, at 
this time, received from princes, nobles, robber knights, 
debauched scholars and the mob, was due to the in- 
sidious attacks he made on the authority of the Holy 
See and its legitimate head. Tetzel was keen enough 
to notice this and he determined in the interests of 
truth and respect for legitimate ecclesiastical authority 
to meet the situation. Accordingly, as noted before, 
he issued about the end of April, 1518, fifty Theses on 
the power of the Pope to show "that he alone pos- 
sesses the right to decide the true sense and meaning 
of Scripture; that what is true and of faith about 
Indulgences, only the Pope can decide ; that the Church 
has many Catholic truths which are neither expressly 
declared in the canon of Scripture, nor explicitly stated 
by the Church Fathers; that all doctrines relating to 



86 The Facts About Luther 



faith and defined as such by the Apostolic See, are to 
be reckoned among Catholic truths, whether or not 
they are contained explicitly in the Bible/' These 
propositions were strictly in the spirit of the scholastic 
theology in vogue at the time, and served to raise the 
contention to the plane of principle. 

Luther was now challenged to come out in the open 
and declare himself clearly on the Pope's authority in 
matters of faith and practice. He at once perceived 
what a stumbling block Tetzel had thrown in his way. 
He did not attempt to dispute or contradict Tetzel's 
Fifty Theses. Had he done so he must have plainly 
acknowledged himself a heretic, cut himself off from 
all escape and had no other choice left than that of 
either being punished as a heretic or making a recanta- 
tion. As matters stood this would have been pre- 
mature, would have spoiled all, would have ruined him 
and his cause. He was not prepared as yet to enter 
finally on the terrible tragedy of open rebellion against 
the Church of God. 

Tetzel, as the Dublin Review further remarks, had not 
designated Luther personally as a heretic. But Luther 
chose to assume that he had done so and forthwith let 
loose a storm against Tetzel of such brutal and malig- 
nant invective as Luther alone was capable of. Adopt- 
ing the tone of an injured man, a man shamefully mis- 
understood, he filled Germany with hypocritical as- 
severations of his orthodoxy and his devotion to the 
See of Peter. All his party followed in the pseudo 
Liberator's wake. The heathen-minded humanists, 
with Ulrich Von Hutten, the notoriously unprincipled 
libertine, at their head, were especially active in de- 
nouncing and maligning Tetzel. They singled him out 
as a butt of their ribald satire, holding him up to 
scorn and execration as the very impersonation of 
every imaginable abuse and scandal. They used every 
conceivable means known to the abandoned and ignoble 
to besmirch the character, reputation, and influence of 
Tetzel. They proclaimed everywhere to ignorant and 
unthinking crowds that "the avaricious monk" as they 
designated him, "sold grace for money at the highest 



Luther and Indulgences 



87 



price he could," that he used offensive statements res- 
pecting the Blessed Virgin, and that he magnified the 
effects of the Indulgence by the use of unseemly com- 
parisons, all to ring the money into the papal coffer 
in the hope of freeing souls from purgatory's suffer- 
ings." They put the most horrid blasphemies into his 
mouth, so horrid that we would be ashamed to repro- 
duce theqi here. Plenty of mud was flung at Tetzel 
and unfortunately much of it at the time stuck and 
has done service ever since. The story of Tetzel and 
his chest, along with many others of a still more 
profane description, are still told to the incredulous 
although they have been time and again refuted. Schol- 
ars of repute nowadays dare not repeat or reassert the 
absurd infamies. The testimony against such a course 
is too overwhelming to risk exposure and defeat. 

The campaign of lies, slander and calumny inaugur- 
ated and carried on unceasingly by Luther and his 
quarrelsome allies, preyed upon the sensitive spirit of 
the gifted preacher and gradually his health gave away. 
Wounded by the rude and unchristian treatment he 
received at the hands of unscrupulous enemies, and 
deeply affected by the sight of the mischief which had 
been wrought by the religious revolution he was the 
first to foresee, he retired to the pious seclusion of his 
monastery, where after a short while he died, not in 
disgrace, as his malefactors allege, but from a broken 
heart due to the persecution he had suffered. His 
death occurred August n, 15 19, and he was buried 
before the High Altar of the Dominican Church at 
Leipzic. 

"Tetzel could not have set up a better monument 
to his own character," writes Dr. Grone, "than he did 
in the grief and affliction which hastened his end. The 
ruin of the Church, the wild infidelity and unspeak- 
able disorders, which the triumph of Luther must 
needs entail on Germany — this was the worm that 
gnawed his vital thread. It broke his heart to be 
forced to see how the sincere champions of the old 
Church truths were left alone, were slandered, despised 
and misunderstood by their own party, while the 



88 The Facts About Luther 



mockers and revilers of the immutable doctrine won 
applause on all sides." 

"History," says the Catholic Encyclopedia, "presents 
few characters more unfortunate and pathetic than 
Tetzel. Among his contemporaries the victim of the 
most corrosive ridicule, every foul charge laid at his 
door, every blasphemous utterance placed in his mouth, 
a veritable literature of fiction and fable built about 
his personality, in modern history held up as a prover- 
bial mountebank and oily harlequin, denied even the 
support and sympathy of his own allies — Tetzel had 
to await the light of modern critical scrutiny, not only 
for a moral rehabilitation, but also for vindication as 
a soundly trained theologian and a monk of irreproach- 
able deportment." (Paulus, "Johann Tetzel," Mainz, 
1899; Hermann, "Johann Tetzel," Frankfort, 1882; 
Grone, "Tetzel und Luther," Soest, i860.) 

To describe the Dominican friar as the cause of the 
whole movement which began in 15 17 is, in view of the 
facts, the merest legend. ''Notwithstanding the ef- 
forts," as Grisar says, "which Luther made to repre- 
sent the matter in this or a similar light, it has been 
clearly proved that his own spiritual development was 
the cause or at least the principal cause. Other fac- 
tors co-operated more or less. His false ideas on grace 
and justification and good works, and his determina- 
tion to put a stop to the abuses connected with Indul- 
gences, led him in 15 17 to make a general attack, even 
though partly veiled, on the whole ecclesiastical system 
of Indulgences." 

If we keep this in view we can easily understand 
what Luther wrote to his dying antagonist in the hope 
of affording him some consolation when he was suf- 
fering keenly from the reproaches the Reformer 
heaped upon him. In this letter Luther says: "You 
need not trouble and distress yourself, for the matter 
did not begin with you. This* child, indeed, had quite 
another father." (De Wette, Seidemann, 6, 18.) He 
himself was that father. He started the controversy, 
being, says his pupil Oldecop, "by nature proud and 
audacious." At the outset of the trouble it was stated 



Luther and Indulgences 



89 



that as soon as Luther heard from Staupitz at Grimma 
of Tetzel's behavior, he exclaimed: "Please God, I 
will knock a hole in his drum." This saying has done 
service for the longest time, but no scholar to-day re- 
hearses it because it lacks all basis of veritable data. 
Luther's rebellion against the Church would, however, 
have taken place, if no Indulgence had been promul- 
gated or if Tetzel had never been born. 

In due., time Archbishop Albert submitted Luther's 
Theses to his board of consultors at Aschaffenburg 
and to the professors of the University of Mayence. 
All the examiners gave the Theses long and careful 
study. After due deliberation they concluded as a 
result of their findings, that the Theses were of an 
heretical character and that proceedings against their 
author should be taken. A report of their examination 
and the conclusions arrived at, together with a copy 
of the Theses, were*then regularly forwarded to the 
Holy See. It will thus be seen that the first judicial 
proceeding against Luther did not emanate from 
Tetzel, as some authors falsely allege. 

This action on the part of the authorities did not 
please Luther as he was anxious to continue as long 
as possible in good favor with the Pope. Shortly after 
he learned of the official proceeding he wrote to his 
friend Langus and styled the archbishop and the 
others who examined and condemned his proposi- 
tions, "Buffoons and Earthworms." The calling of 
names, as we see, was no trouble to this disappointed 
man. Rome was slow and lenient in her action. Per- 
haps the Pope was right in favoring delay. Under 
date of Trinity Sunday, May 30, 15 18, Luther wrote 
to Leo X. a letter professing the utmost respect for 
His Holiness and declaring that he submitted himself 
in the grave circumstances unreservedly to his deci- 
sion. With his wonted disingenuousness he said of his 
Theses and strange doctrines : "They are disputations, 
not doctrines, not dogmas, set out as usual in an enig- 
matical form; yet could I have foreseen it, I should 
certainly have taken part on my side, that they should 
be more easy to understand. Were I such a man as 



SO The Facts About Luther 



they wish me to appear, and all things had not been 
rightly handled by me in the course of disputation, it 
could not be that the most illustrious Prince Frederick, 
Duke of Saxony, Elector of the Empire, would permit 
such a pest in his university, pre-eminent as he is for 
his attachment to the Catholic apostolic truth. Where- 
fore, most blessed Father, I offer myself prostrate at 
the feet of your Holiness and give myself up to you 
with all that I am or have : quicken, slay, call, recall, 
approve, reprove, as shall please Thee. It rests with 
your Holiness to promote or prevent my undertaking, 
to declare it right or wrong. Whatever happens, I 
recognize the voice of your Holiness as that of Christ 
abiding and speaking in Thee. If I deserve death, I 
do not refuse to die." A more complete expression of 
submission to the judgment of the Apostolic See could 
hardly be formulated, but Luther's actions thereafter 
did not correspond with his language. The insincerity 
manifested in his letter to Leo X. can be explained only 
by the uncommon duplicity of his character. 

Very shortly after this letter to Leo X., owing to a 
variety of circumstances, especially the troubles which 
menaced Germany on account of the religious dissen- 
sions then existing, Emperor Maximilian formally de- 
nounced the agitator to the Holy See. Luther was 
immediately cited to appear at Rome within sixty days 
to answer before judges appointed by His Holiness, 
in regard to the doctrines he had put forth. The 
Elector of Saxony, the ruling sovereign of the country 
to which Luther belonged, in the meantime requested 
the Pope to dispense with his personal appearance in 
answer to the citation and asked that instead of going 
to Rome he might be allowed to answer for himself 
before a Cardinal Legate in Germany. Rome con- 
sented and Cardinal Cajetan, a man remarkable for his 
erudition and greatly beloved by the workingmen of 
Rome because he had espoused their cause against the 
usurers, was detailed to give Luther a hearing and to 
endeavor to call him back from his errors. The 
Cardinal met Luther at Augsburg on October n, 1518. 
All patient and condescending he exhorted Luther to 



Luther and Indulgences 



91 



renounce his errors and to return like a repenting child 
to his mother, the Church. Luther professed a willing- 
ness to disavow any expressions, if the legate con- 
vinced him that they were erroneous, but the Nuncio 
was not to be led into any dispute. He told the wilful 
man that he was there to- receive the renunciation of 
his errors, not to argue. "What error have I taught?" 
asked Luther. Cardinal Cajetan presented two errors. 
First, "That the merits of Christ are not the treasures 
of Indulgences." Second, "That faith alone is sufficient 
for salvation." He showed decisions of the Holy See 
covering the ground and again called on Luther to re- 
nounce his errors. The kind offices of the Cardinal 
were useless and the meeting terminated without ben- 
eficial results. Luther, however, asked for a delay 
of three days, which was granted. On the morning 
following the conversation with the Cardinal, he sent 
a protest to his Eminence, declaring that, "he had never 
intended to teach anything offensive to Catholic doc- 
trine, to the Holy Scriptures, to the authority of the 
Fathers or to the decrees of the Pope." Luther did 
not wait for the expiration of the time he requested. 
He departed from Augsburg in secrecy, and in a few 
days afterward, he gave the world another proof of his 
duplicity by having affixed to the gate of the Carmelite 
monastery where he had lodged, an appeal to the effect 
that if - he had attacked Indulgences, it was because they 
were not enjoined by God. His judges, he averred, 
were not to be trusted ; he had not gone to Rome, be- 
cause, there, where justice once abided, homicide now 
dwelt. Finally, he "appealed from the Pope ill-in- 
formed to the Pope better-instructed." 

One more attempt was made by Rome later on to 
settle the matter without coming to extremes. A second 
legate was sent to Germany. Charles Miltiz, a young 
Saxon nobleman in minor orders, who had spent some 
years in Rome, was chosen for the office. The appoint- 
ment was unfortunate and abortive. Miltiz lacked the 
prudence, tact, energy and straightforwardness his 
difficult mission demanded. He, however, drew from 
Luther an act which if it "is no recantation, is at least 



92 



The Facts About Luther 



remarkably like one." (Beard 274.) "In it he promised 
to observe silence if his assailants did the same; com- 
plete submission to the Pope; to publish a plain stated 
ment to the public advocating loyalty to the Church ; 
and to place the whole vexatious cause in the hands of 
a delegated bishop/' The meeting closed with a banquet 
and embraces, tears of joy and a kiss of peace, only to 
be disregarded and ridiculed afterwards by Luther. 
This interview took place at Altenburg in the begin- 
ning of the year 1519. 

Shortly after this meeting on March 3, 15 19, Luther 
addressed another letter to the Pope overflowing as 
usual with expressions of the greatest loyalty and most 
perfect submission. In it, amongst other things, he 
"calls God and man to witness that he has never 
wished and does not now desire to touch the Roman 
Church or the Pope's sacred authority; and that he 
acknowledges most explicitly that this Church rules 
over all and that nothing in heaven or in earth is 
superior to it, save only Jesus Christ our Lord." Only 
two weeks before he made this pronouncement calling 
God and man to witness his words, he wrote to his 
friend Scheurl : "I have often said that hitherto I have 
only been playing. Now at last we shall have to act 
seriously against the Roman authority and against 
Roman arrogance." (De Wette 1, 230.) This detest- 
able hypocrisy is further confirmed when ten days 
after sending to the Pope the letter of March 3rd, he 
declared to his friend Spalatinus: "I do not mind 
telling you, between ourselves, that I am not sure 
whether the Pope is Antichrist himself or only his 
apostle." (De Wette 1, 239.) 

A terrible struggle was now going on in Luther. His 
mind was divided between his still remaining respect 
for ecclesiastical authority on the one hand and his 
personal pride and attachment to his own opinions on 
the other. At a later period of his life he said of him- 
self, that "he was in such a state of mind at this time 
as to be almost out of his senses ; that he was scarcely 
conscious whether he were awake or asleep; and that 
it was not without a severe struggle and great difficulty 



Luther and Indulgences 



93 



that he finally conquered his conviction that he ought 
to "hear the Church/' As late as the 15th of January, 
1520, he wrote to the newly elected Emperor, declaring 
that he would die a true and obedient son of the Cath- 
olic Church and expressing his willingness to submit 
to the decision of all the universities whose impartial- 
ity could not be suspected. But in proportion as he 
found the authority of the Church and of learned uni- 
versities ranged against him, exactly in the same pro- 
portion did his adhesion to his own opinions grow more 
and more obstinate. 

Luther seemed not to be able to free himself from 
his errors. As time went on he grew bolder in his 
assertions and astonished his friends by advancing even 
more daring absurdities. In his advanced system, de- 
nying dogma after dogma, there was no longer room 
for Indulgences and Confession, nor for Purgatory, 
nor for honoring any saint, since there are no saints, 
but all remain corrupt for all eternity, only the cor- 
ruption is covered by the cloak of Christ's merits. 
"Man/' he says, "since the fall of our first parents had 
not possessed any liberty whatever and that his works, 
whether good or bad, were always offensive to God." 
He could not see that in denying human liberty he was 
expressing an opinion that is not only as false as it is 
repugnant to common sense, but offensive not only to 
God but his creatures. To secure the support of the 
masses, he flattered these by declaring that "all Chris- 
tians are priests, all have equal authority to interpret 
the Bible for themselves and there is no difference 
among the baptized, priest, bishop, pope, except the 
offices assigned to some." Nor did he forget the secular 
princes, who were impervious to all religious impulses 
and whose support he was endeavoring to secure 
before his final breach with the Church, for to them 
he announced the flattering teaching: "For as much 
as the temporal power is ordained of God to punish 
the wicked and to protect the good, therefore it must 
be allowed to do its work unhindered on the whole 
Christian body, without respect to persons, whether it 
strike popes, bishops, priests, monks, nuns or whom 



94 



The Facts About Luther 



it will." 'The secular power," he maintained, "should 
summon a free council" which "should reorganize the 
constitution of the Church from its foundation and 
must liberate Germany from the Roman robbers, from 
the scandalous, devilish rule of the Romans." "It is 
stated," he adds, "that there is no finer government in 
the world than that of the Turks, who have neither a 
spiritual nor a secular code of law, but only their 
Koran. And it must be acknowledged that there is no 
more disagreeable system of rule than ours, with our 
Canon Law and our Common Law, whilst no class any 
longer obeys either natural reason or the Holy Scrip- 
ture." 

When this teaching of Luther, given in part only, 
is considered, it is easily seen he was no longer a Cath- 
olic although he continued to celebrate Mass at Cath- 
olic altars and maintained that he was sound in the 
faith. No wonder that Duke George, astonished and 
provoked at the bold heretical assertions of the in- 
solent monk, exclaimed in an angry voice, "This man's 
teaching is dangerous." The arbitrating universities 
of Cologne and Louvain, together with that of Paris, 
condemned his teaching and declared it heretical. 
Luther had shortly before looked upon these judges as 
"his masters in theology" ; he now called them "mules 
and asses, epicurean swine." Rome finally discussed 
Luther's new doctrines with patient care and critical 
calmness, and was, at last, compelled to denounce them 
as "eccentric, radical and untenable." 

There was a limit to the patience of Leo X. The 
gentle and learned Pope pitied the venom, hatred and 
indomitable stubbornness and pride of Luther, but 
considering the disturbed condition of religious affairs 
created in Germany by the agitator's misguided efforts 
and the religious pantheistical mysticism his system was 
engendering, he was compelled to act in the interest 
of peace and truth. He accordingly issued a Bull, 
written in a tone rather of paternal affliction than of 
just severity, in which the unfortunate man's errors 
were denounced in forty-one propositions, some of 
which were qualified as evidently heretical and others 



Luther and Indulgences 



95 



as rash and scandalous. "Imitating the clemency of 
the Almighty," Leo says, "who wills not the death of 
a sinner, but that he should be converted and live, we 
shall forget all injuries done to us and the Apostolic 
See, and we shall do all we can to make him give up 
his errors. By the depths of God's mercy and the 
blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, shed for the Redemp- 
tion of man and the foundation of the Church, we 
expect and j>ray Luther and his followers to cease 
disturbing the peace, the unity, and the power of the 
Church." Thus speaks the generous heart of the Pope 
who apparently suffers while he is compelled to chas- 
tise a rebellious son and declare him excommunicated 
unless he should retract his errors at the expiration 
of sixty days. 

Luther's pride would not suffer him to submit. His 
separation from the Church, her doctrine, her public 
worship and her constitution was complete. Branded 
now as a heretic, his wrath no longer knew any bounds 
of moderation. He immediately issued an insolent 
diatribe entitled, "Against the Execrable Bull of Anti- 
christ" "At length," he says, "thanks to the zeal of 
my friends, I have seen this bat in all its beauty. In 
truth, I know not whether the Papists are joking. This 
must be the work of John Eck, the man of lies and 
iniquities, the accursed heretic ... I maintain that the 
author of this Bull is Antichrist : I curse it as a blas- 
phemy against the Son of God ... I trust that every 
Christian who accepts this Bull will suffer the torments 
of hell . . . See how I retract, daughter of a Soap 
Bull ... It is said that the donkey sings badly, simply 
because he pitches his voice on too high a key. Cer- 
tainly, this Bull would sound more agreeable, were 
its blasphemies not directed against heaven. Where 
are you, emperors, kings and princes of the earth, that 
you tolerate the hellish voice of Antichrist? Leo X. 
and you, the Roman Cardinals, I tell you to your 
faces . . . Renounce your satanic blasphemies against 
Jesus Christ." 

Luther followed up this imprecation and invective 
on Rome by publicly burning on the ioth day of 



96 The Facts About Luther 



December, 1520, at the eastern gate of Wittenburg, 
opposite the Church of the Holy Cross, in the presence 
of many students, who jeered and sang ribald drink- 
ing songs, the Bull of Leo X., and all his writings, to- 
gether with the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and other 
Catholic theologians. On the day after this contemp- 
tuous exhibition, Luther preached to the people and 
said: " Yesterday I burned in the public square the 
devilish works of the Pope; and I wish that it was 
the Pope, that is, the Papal See, that was consumed. 
If you do not separate from Rome, there is no salva- 
tion for your souls." 

The Gospel of Luther is now set up against the 
Gospel of the good and gentle Jesus. Introduced in 
hatred of the Pope and with the vain promise of salva- 
tion to all who abandon him whom the Master ap- 
pointed to preserve the unity and the well-being of 
His Church, it went on its course of protestation with 
little avail, for the Church of Christ still remains and 
the office of Peter to instruct in sound doctrine still 
continues and will to the end of time. 

Luther, whilst he was presumably a member of the 
Church, Renounced Indulgences in the bitterest terms, 
much to the delight of all his followers. But when 
from a reformer he becomes a revolutionist and with- 
out credentials or authority started his own church, he 
has nothing to say concerning the notorious scandals 
that disgraced its career. He was, on the contrary, 
most kindly disposed toward it. As every student of 
history knows he tried his hand at dispensations and 
granted many of which the Catholic Church was never 
guilty. Thus, for example, he dispensed himself and 
Katherine Von Bora from their vows of celibacy; he 
dispensed every husband from his fidelity to marital 
vows in his shameless utterance in a public sermon, 
"si nolit domina, veniat ancilla." (Sermon De Matri- 
monio.) He gave a dispensation to Philip of Hesse to 
commit bigamy and his reward was four "fuder" of 
wine and a protection of Protestantism. Bucer, who 
was a party to that heathenish, infamous concession, 
admits that "the whole Reformation was one grand 



Luther and Indulgences 



97 



indulgence for libertinism." Here are his words: 
'The greater part of the people seem only to have 
embraced the Gospel in order to shake off the yoke of 
discipline and the obligation of fasting and penance, 
which rested upon them in popery, and that they may 
live according to their own pleasure, enjoying their 
lusts and lawless appetites without control. That was 
the reason they lent a willing ear to the teaching of 
justification by faith alone and not by good works, for 
the latter of which they had no relish." (Bucer De 
Regn. I, c I, 4.) Bucer's words ought to bring the 
blush of shame to the face of all who in the hour of 
the blasphemy of despair attempt to vilify and mis- 
represent the Church of God. They ought to remem- 
ber also that Luther's special brand of dispensations 
are not altogether out of market yet. 

In the theological lectures on the Psalms, which 
Luther, when still a Catholic, delivered as Professor in 
the years 1513-1516, he described from time to time 
the peculiarities and distinguishing features of heretics. 
'The principal sin of heretics is their pride," he says. 
"In their pride they insist on their own opinions... 
Frequently they serve God with great fervor and they 
do not intend any evil; but they serve God according 
to their own will • . . Even when refuted, they are 
ashamed to retract their errors and to change their 
words ... They think they are guided directly by 
God . . . The things that have been established for 
centuries and for which so many martyrs have suffered 
death, they begin to treat as doubtful questions . . . 
They interpret (the Bible) according to their own 
heads and their own particular views and carry their 
own opinions into it." 

Thfe description leaves nothing to be desired. Luther 
tells most accurately the traits of the false prophets 
and lying teachers whom the God of truth would have 
his followers avoid. Think you, did the unfortunate 
man realize when he described the characteristics of 
those who cause dissensions in the Church and among 
the brethren, that he was drawing his own portrait in 
later times? If he did, then he should have remem- 



98 The Facts About Luther 



bered the words of the great St. Paul: "I beseech 
you, brethren, to mark them who cause dissensions and 
offences contrary to the doctrine which you have 
learned and to avoid them." (Romans XVI. 17.) 



CHAPTER IV. 



Luther and Justification. 

THERE are few tenets of the Catholic Church so 
little understood, or so grossly misrepresented by 
her adversaries, as her doctrine regarding Justification 
or Sanctification. Many, outside the Church, make the 
mistake of supposing that the Catholic doctrine ascribes 
a justifying and saving efficacy to a mere intellectual 
submission to Church authority, and a mere external 
compliance with its precepts without reference to the 
interior disposition of the soul toward God, or recog- 
nition of the merits of Christ as the source of all the 
supernatural excellence and value of good works. 
Most Protestants are under the impression that the 
Catholic substitutes the merits of the Blessed Virgin 
Mary, the merits of the Saints, and his own merits, as 
an independent ground of justification, in lieu of the 
merits of Christ. They believe, moreover, that merit 
is ascribed to mere external works, such as fasting, 
assisting at mass, and performing ceremonial rites or 
penitential labors, on account of the mere physical na- 
ture, and extent of the works done, without reference 
to the motive from which they proceed. These, and 
other calumnies or rather blasphemies of a similar 
nature, are frequently and confidently repeated in 
popular sermons and controversial tracts until non- 
Catholics come to reject what they suppose to be Catho- 
lic doctrine, but which is frequently only a rejection 
of opinions attributed by mistake to the Catholic 
Church. 

What our adversaries allege on the question of jus- 
tification is not only a misapprehension, but a travesty 
on genuine Catholic teaching and the underlying pur- 
pose of the misrepresentations of the true doctrine of 
the Church is to prevent, if possible, all who are not 
of the household of faith from ascertaining with cer- 
tainty the exact and complete sense of the doctrine 



100 The Facts About Luther 



Christ has commanded us to believe and the law He 
has commanded us to keep under penalty of eternal 
condemnation. The sooner the opinions attributed by 
malice or by mistake to the Catholic Church are ex- 
amined carefully and candidly in relationship with 
genuine Catholic doctrine, the better for the interests 
of souls who long for the truth and who earnestly 
desire the spread of the Kingdom of God on earth. 
To all, who hold the views we have alluded to and who 
labor under a misapprehension of the Church's teach- 
ing regarding the question of man's justification, we 
wish to say, that so far from fathering the impious and 
absurd doctrines our adversaries allege we maintain, 
the Catholic Church rejects, condemns and anathema- 
tizes them. 

It is, then, false, and notoriously false, that Catholics 
believe, or in any age did believe, that they could justify 
themselves by their own proper merits ; or that they 
can do the least good in the order of salvation without 
the grace of God merited for them by Jesus Christ; 
or that we can deserve this grace by anything we have 
the natural power of doing ; or that leave to commit 
sin, or even the pardon of any sin which has been 
committed, can be purchased of any person whomso- 
ever; or that the essence of religion and our hopes of 
salvation consist in forms and ceremonies or in other 
exterior things. What the Catholic Church teaches 
and ever has taught her children is to trust for mercy, 
grace and salvation to the merits of Jesus Christ. 
Nevertheless, she asserts that we have free-will, and 
that this being assisted by Divine grace can and must 
co-operate to our justification by faith, sorrow for our 
sins and other corresponding acts of virtue which 
God will not fail to develop in us if we do not throw 
obstacles in the way of them. Thus is all honor and 
merit ascribed to the Creator, and every defect and 
sin attributed to the creature. 

The false views which have been circulated concern- 
ing man's justification, and which have for the last 
four hundred years done service against truth, orig- 



Luther and Justification 



1013 



i/ited in the erratic brain of Martin Luther, whose r 
career evidenced the cold fact that he was incapable 
either of hard reasoning or clear thinking. We do not 
wish by this remark to insinuate that the "Reformer" 
was not endowed with talent of a high order, but, as 
every student of his history knows, his thought on 
serious topics most frequently was strikingly confused. 
He was not an exact thinker, and being unable to 
analyze an idea into its constituents, as is necessary for 
one who will apprehend it correctly, he failed to grasp 
questions which by the general mass of the people were 
thoroughly and correctly understood. How he missed 
and confounded the consecrated teaching on man's 
justification is a case in point. He allowed himself to 
cultivate an unnecessary antipathy to so-called "holi- 
ness by works" and this attitude, combined with his ten- 
dency to look at the worst side of things and his knowl- 
edge of some real abuses then prevalent in the practice 
of works, doubtless contributed to develop his dislike 
for good works in general and led him by degrees to 
strike at the very roots of the Catholic system of sacra- 
ments and grace, of penance and satisfaction, in fact, 
all the instruments or means instituted by God both 
for conferring and increasing His saving relationship 
with man. The extraordinary exaggerations of which 
he was guilty in this regard must be imputed, not to 
the Church's teaching, but to the peculiar notions he 
formed of it in the confusion of his own thoughts — as 
we shall see later on. 

The Catholic Church has always insisted upon the 
necessity of being "perfect even as Our Heavenly Father 
is perfect" by such an entire subjugation of our passions 
and a conformity of our will with that of God, that 
"our conversation," according to St. Paul, "may be in 
heaven" while we are yet living here on earth. This 
fundamental truth Luther knew well. Early in his 
career he ambitioned, as was right, to exemplify the 
teaching of the Church in his life. He desired to be 
perfect, to reach justification and to become a great 
saint. For a time he adopted the approved and neces- 



102 The Facts About Luther 



sary means whereby his heart's desire for perfection 
might be realized. In an evil moment, however, he un- 
fortunately allowed himself to forget the indispensable 
necessity of humility which is the groundwork of all 
the virtues, and by which, says St Bernard, "from a 
thorough knowledge of ourselves we become little in 
our own estimation." Although this lesson was 
strongly enforced by Christ and His disciples, yet he 
seemed to entirely overlook it, and gradually he became 
a prey to spiritual pride, the prolific source of all evil. 
Dominated by this dangerous spirit, he grew careless 
in the use of the ordinary sane and prudent means sanc- 
tioned by all the masters of the spiritual life to ac- 
quire true peace of heart and perfect union with God. To 
the exclusion of all and every counsel of the experi- 
enced in the direction of souls, he, in a spirit of un- 
bounded self-sufficiency, imagined he could acquire 
perfection by his own peculiar methods and exertions. 
As a result of his mistaken determination to reject every 
wise rule laid down for the acquirement of perfection, 
he went from one extreme to another until he ex- 
hausted himself vainly in fasts, prayers and mortifica- 
tions. Moderation and common sense in his case 
seemed to have been unknown qualities. When at 
length the thought dawned on him that he had not been 
able in spite of all his singular, excessive, imprudent 
practices of piety to hide from himself the sinfulness 
of his nature and the continual violence of his passions, 
and that he had still to struggle with temptation, he was 
plunged more and more into sadness, desolation, and 
terror of God's justice. At this time he seemed to 
forget that if God's justice avenged sin, it also re- 
warded true virtue. He should have known that the 
Catholic Church, of which he was a member, never 
expected any of her subjects to propitiate God with their 
own works exclusively. She always taught her chil- 
dren that over and above the performance of legitimate 
and approved works of piety, they were directed to put 
their trust for the mastery of the flesh in the infinite 
merits of the Redeemer and discharge their duties in 



Luther and Justification 103 



full reliance on Divine grace which is ever freely- 
bestowed on all who earnestly strive to do good and 
avoid evil. Confidence in God and diffidence in self 
enable the humble, no matter what form passion may 
assume, ever to say with St. Paul, "I can do all things 
in Him who strengthened me." Had Luther remem- 
bered this teaching of the Church and been obedient to 
the directions of his spiritual guides, he would not have 
been carried away by his own whims and fancies to the 
loss of his peace of mind and to distress and anguish 
of soul. 

In this state of inward depression, which often pros- 
trated him with terror, he had the pity and kindly 
consideration of his friends. To console and afford 
him relief some of them recommended him to direct 
his attention in future more than he had in the past to 
greater confidence and reliance on God's mercy which 
is infinite and ever ready to relieve sinners through 
the merits acquired by the death of Christ. The sug- 
gestion, which was not novel or unknown to him, in- 
spired him for a time with new hope. It let a beam of 
sunlight into the darkness of his terror. This, how- 
ever, was soon dispelled, for a reaction set in when 
he began to ponder over and put his own sense on the 
words of St. Paul; 'The just man lives by faith." By 
a process of reasoning peculiar to himself he construed 
the word "faith" to mean an assurance of personal 
salvation and "justification" to mean, not an infusion 
of justice into the heart of the person justified, but a 
mere external imputation of it. Having managed to 
connect in his own mind, and afterwards in the minds 
of others, the word "faith" with this unnatural mean- 
ing, he could appeal to all the passages in St. Paul's 
Epistles which assert that justification is by faith and 
claim them as so many proofs of his newly discovered 
doctrine. He thinks now that self-pacification is se- 
cured and that henceforward he can dispense with all 
and every other virtue enjoined in Scripture and work 
out his salvation through "faith alone without works." 
How he came to hold this unwarranted position, he 



104 The Facts About Luther 



tells in the following words: "In such thoughts," re- 
ferring to his ill-will and anger against God, "I passed 
day and night till by God's grace, I remarked how the 
words hung together : to wit, The justice of God is 
revealed in the Gospel/ as it is written, 'The just man 
lives by his faith.' Thence have I learned to know 
this same justice of God, in which the just man, through 
God's grace and gift, lives by faith alone ... I forth- 
with felt I was entirely born anew and that I found 
a wide and unbarred door by which to enter Paradise." 

In this declaration of false security, we have the 
beginning of Luther's new gospel, which, needless to 
say, is directly and openly opposed to the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ. As a theologian, he should have realized 
that his notion of the absolute assurance of salvation 
imparted by Fakh was as false as it was unsound, and 
as a professor of Scripture, he should have known that 
faith alone is barren and lifeless apart from the meri- 
torious works which are necessarily connected with and 
founded on it. To hold and 'declare that men are 
justified by faith to the entire exclusion of other Divine 
virtues is nothing less than a perversion of the Bible, 
a falsification of the Word of God, and an injury to 
souls called to work out their salvation along the lines 
plainly designated by Jesus Christ. But Luther's self- 
esteem and self-conceit blinded him to the truth he 
once held in honor, and, instead of repelling and mas- 
tering his singular conception of salvation, as he was in 
duty bound to do, he held to it with unbending tenacity, 
developing it more and more until he finally declares 
in Cap. 2, ad. Gal. that "Faith alone is necessary for 
justification: all other things are completely optional 
being no longer either commanded or forbidden." It 
is this doctrine which he afterwards called the Articu- 
lus stantis vel cadentis Ecclesiae; and if we cannot quite 
accept this description of it, at least we can recognize 
that it is the corner-stone of the Lutheran and Calvin- 
istic systems. 

In Luther's new program of salvation the living, 
vital, efficacious faith that manifests itself in good 



Luther and Justification 



105 



works, and, without which, it is impossible to please 
God, must no longer prevail in the minds of men. All 
the old teachings, practises and observances of piety, so 
useful and helpful for man's justification and his de- 
liverance from Divine vengeance, must now be forgot- 
ten and abandoned. The priesthood, sacraments, in- 
dulgences, intercessory prayer, fasts, pilgrimages, all 
spiritual works must be displaced to make way for his 
miserable, degrading, and colorless invention of faith 
without works. In his special system he wanted none 
of the old means for gaining eternal life. They were 
considered antiquated, unavailing and worthless. In 
his estimation it was not possible for man to perform 
any works which were really good and acceptable to 
God. Man was so depraved in consequence of the fall 
of Adam and Eve that he became totally corrupt, both 
in his intellect and his will, and was consequently in- 
capable till regenerated of thinking, willing or doing 
any good thing. All his actions, therefore, even those 
which were most strictly accordant with the precepts 
of the natural and Divine law, were "evil and only evil 
and that continually." "Corruption hung over man for- 
ever and tainted everything he did. All the works of 
man before justification were damnable sins ; and all 
the works of man after justification were so sinful in 
the sight of God that, if He were to judge them strictly, 
every one would be damned/' In commenting on one 
of the Psalms, he makes this horrible statement : "Con- 
ceived in sorrow and corruption, the child sins even in 
liis mother's womb, when, as yet, a mere fetus, an 
impure mass of matter, before it becomes a human 
creature, it commits iniquity and incurs damnation. As 
he grows the innate element of corruption develops. 
Man has said to sin, Thou art my father,' and every 
act he performs is an ofifense against God ; and to the 
worms, 'You are my brothers/ and he crawls like 
them in mire and corruption. He is a bad tree and 
cannot produce good fruit; a dung-hill and can only 
exhale foul odors. He is so thoroughly corrupted that 
it is absolutely impossible for him to produce good 



106 



The Facts About Luther 



actions. Sin is his nature ; he cannot help committing 
it. Man may do his best to be good, still his every 
action is unavoidably bad ; he commits a sin as often 
as he draws his breath." (Consult Wittenb. III. 518.) 
These were favorite sayings of Luther, and thus, if we 
are to believe him, every action of an unregenerate 
person, however just, generous or noble, is utterly 
perverse and corrupt. On the other hand, he main- 
tained, "no action that was bad would bring the regener- 
ate man under condemnation, because he was justified 
by faith ; nor were his good actions, in even the slight- 
est degree, meritorious, because they were done entirely 
through the grace given him by the Holy Ghost." He 
further states that "the nature of man is so corrupted 
that it can never be regenerated and sin will remain 
in the soul, even of the just, forever. God's all powerful 
grace does not cleanse from sin. The Almighty does 
not regard the sins of men. He covers them over with 
the merits of Christ and does not impute them to the 
sinner whose faith in the sufferings of the Redeemer 
is made manifest." This is the effect of faith, which, 
he says, "tends to prevent our filth from stinking before 
God." (Walch XIII. 1480.) 

Over and over again Luther asserted that man could 
not be just, but, in his desire of novelty, he thought 
there must be some way never known before whereby 
man could be made just, and so after a display of 
loose thinking, his wonderful ingenuity for mischief 
invented the theory of justification by the imputation 
of the righteousness of Christ and not as heretofore by 
the communication of His justice. "Christ," he says, 
"has suffered for our sins and has fulfilled the law 
for us. We have only to believe in Him and by be- 
lieving in Him, take hold, as it were, of His merits and 
put them on like a cloak. If we do that, although im- 
perfect and unholy, we shall be saved and considered 
just, not for anything that God made us, not for re- 
generation, or transformation, or sanctification but for 
the righteousness of Christ, who in Himself was in- 
finitely holy. All that man has to do is to remain pas- 



Luther and Justification 107 

sive ; he must not attempt to do anything himself for 
his salvation. This would be presumption/' He must 
remain with regard to all things, which pertain to the 
salvation of the soul, as he states in his comment on 
Genesis xix, 26, "like the statue of salt into which the 
wife of Lot was changed ; to the trunk of a tree or a 
stone, like a statue, lifeless and having no use of either 
eyes, mouth or other senses or of a heart. " "To be a 
Christian means to have the Evangelium and to believe 
in Christ. This faith brings forgiveness of sins and 
Divine grace ; it comes solely through the Holy Ghost, 
who works it through the word without any co-opera- 
tion on our part. . . . Man remains passive and is 
acted upon by the Holy Ghost just as clay is shaped by 
the potter." (Tischr. II. C. 15. § I.) 

This view of justification was forthwith made 
the fundamental dogma of the new religion Luther 
formulated for the world's acceptance. From the time 
this false doctrine was first announced, his followers 
in heresy have been taught to believe that men are 
saved by faith alone and that good works are alto- 
gether unnecessary. "The Gospel," Luther falsely 
declares, "teaches nothing of the merits of works ; he 
that says the Gospel requires works for salvation, I 
say, flat and plain, is a liar." (Table Talk, p. 137, 
Hazlitt.) If men believe in Christ, they are told, and 
accept Him as their personal Saviour, His justice will 
be imputed to them and they will go straight to Heaven. 
It does not matter what evil they have done during their 
lives; it does not matter whether or not they repent 
of their sins; it does not matter whether or not, at 
the moment of death, they have compunction, contrition 
or attrition, or, are in a state of grace, if they have 
faith they will be saved. 

Luther was the first in Christendom to proclaim to 
the world that man was "justified by faith alone." The 
doctrine was novel and admirably suited to lull and 
tranquilize the misgivings of conscience. Although it 
opened the way to carelessness of behavior, as events 
proved, yet he felt sure of the correctness of his teach- 



108 The Facts About Luther 



ing and wanted no discussion thereon. Any one who 
would dare contradict him on the point and declare 
the Gospel required works for salvation was to be 
branded as a "liar." This appellation is not a pleasant 
one, but, as a matter of fact, its author deserved it 
better than he knew, for his singular teaching was as 
false as it was pernicious, and being without warrant 
in the divine plan of salvation, it was utterly powerless 
to lead souls to everlasting life. 

If this teaching of Luther's were true, it is apparent 
that Christ, instead of declaring that the first and great 
commandment was love, should have said that it was 
faith. But the Master did not believe that we were 
saved by faith alone, because when the rich young man 
went to Him and asked what he must do to gain Heaven 
our Lord answered : "If thou wilt enter into life, keep 
the Commandments." He did not say, "Believe in 
me. Accept me for your personal Saviour. Have faith 
in me." No, but He did say: "If thou wilt enter into 
life, keep the Commandments." It is evident from this 
solemn declaration of Christ that He required in His 
followers the faith that manifests itself in such volun- 
tary works and actions as are pleasing to Him and are 
performed out* of Love for Him. That living faith, 
which the Master enjoins, is inseparable from charity 
or the love of God, and charity is not real unless it 
induces us to keep the Commandments and conform 
our lives not to some special injunction or virtue, but 
to all the requirements and truths of Divine revelation. 
This is the teaching which Christ constantly insisted 
upon, and this, and no other, was and is still the teach- 
ing which He communicated to His Church for the 
enlightenment and sanctification of the world until the 
end of time. 

When Luther advanced his fanciful and mischiev- 
ous conception of justification the Church, true to her 
mission of safeguarding the truths of her Divine 
Founder, had no difficulty in showing that fiduciary 
faith — a confidence or hope founded only on the merits 
of Jesus Christ — was an absolutely new invention and 



Luther and Justification 109 



was not only worthless, but powerless to justify men. 
In her Council of Trent ( 1545-1563) she condemned, as 
was her right, the new-fangled teaching of Luther and 
warned her subjects against its entanglements and dan- 
gers. Then she proclaimed anew for the enlightenment 
of all the heavenly teaching committed to her keeping 
from the beginning and insisted that whilst faith is 
necessary to dispose the sinner to receive grace, it 
alone is not sufficient for justification. A living faith 
that embraces righteousness is what is required, and 
this manifests itself in acts of hope, of love, of sorrow 
and a purpose of amendment of life. It is only then 
that God finding the sinner disposed to believe all re- 
vealed truths, observe all the Commandments and re- 
ceive the Sacraments He instituted, gives him gratui- 
tously His grace or intrinsic justice which remits to 
him his sins and sanctifies him. 

Faith alone has not the power of saving man for 
two reasons : first, that infants are capable of justifi- 
cation, which we- suppose no one will deny, but are not 
capable of an act of faith; second, that faith is a tem- 
porary virtue ceasing in the beatified state, whereas 
the principle of justification is permanent and eternal. 

In the process of justification, the first and foremost 
important place is taken by faith. More, however, is 
required for its development, completion and perfec- 
tion. It should be remembered that when God created 
man, He placed him in a state of probation. He 
constituted him a rational being and imposed certain 
precepts which he was free to keep or violate as he 
may choose unto eternal happiness or eternal misery. 
Although God required the particular exercise of love 
which consists in a voluntary obedience to His precepts, 
yet He cannot dispense with love itself, which is the 
great and necessary requisite to a state of perfect jus- 
tification. The attributes of God require Him to carry 
out the terms of probation to which He has subjected 
man. The acts which proceed from the principle 
of love, in order to bring the soul to God as its ultimate 
term, must, therefore, cover not a part, but the whole 



110 The Facts About Luther 



ground of the Divine law and include not one but all 
the Commandments. 

Love then is the dominating principle in the union 
of the soul with God and the fashioning of it for an 
eternity of reward. 

Faith alone, whether fiduciary or dogmatic, cannot 
then justify man. Since our Divine adoption and 
friendship with God is based on charity or perfect love 
of God, dead faith, faith devoid of charity, cannot 
possess any justifying power. Only such faith as is 
active in charity and good works can justify man and 
this even before the actual reception of Baptism or 
Penance, although not without the desire of the sacra- 
ment. The essence of active justification comprises 
not only forgiveness of sins, but also "Sanctification 
and renovation of the interior man by means of the 
voluntary acceptation of sanctifying grace and other 
supernatural gifts." 

Thus, we are justified by God's justice, not that jus- 
tice whereby He Himself is just, but that justice 
whereby He makes us just, in so far as He bestows 
upon us the gift of His grace which renovates the 
soul interiorly and adheres to it as the soul's own holi- 
ness. 

"Love," as Mohler says, "must already vivify faith 
before the Catholic Church will say that through it man 
is truly pleasing to God. Faith in love and love in 
faith justify; they form here an indispensable unity. 
This justifying faith is not merely negative, but posi- 
tive with all ; not merely a confidence, that for Christ's 
sake forgiveness of sins will be obtained, but a sancti- 
fied feeling, in itself agreeable to God. Charity is un- 
doubtedly, according to Catholic doctrine, a fruit of 
faith. But Faith justifies only when it has already 
brought forth this fruit." 

This teaching of the Church on Justification was 
most distasteful to Luther and, as might be expected 
from a man of his rebellious nature, he opposed it with 
all the force at his command. In the Altenburg edition 
of his works we have a sample of his characteristic 



Luther and Justification 



111 



raving on the point at issue. "The Papists," he says, 
"contend that faith which is informed by charity, justi- 
fies. On this point we must contend and oppose with 
all our strength ; here we must yield not a nail's breadth 
to any ; neither to the angels of Heaven, nor to the gates 
of Hell, nor to St. Paul, nor to an hundred Emperors, 
nor to a thousand Popes, nor to the whole world ; and 
'this be my -watchword and sign' : 'tessera et sym- 
bolum! " The consummate boldness of this call to incite 
rebellion against the express teaching of God regarding 
the salvation of man is most astonishing and scan- 
dalous. 

In all the bitterness of his antagonism and opposition, 
he, after all, was something of a reasoner when he had 
an object to attain and when he wanted to make things 
square with his strange and novel views. He knew 
as well as any man of his day that the Church, to 
which he belonged from his youth to his excommuni- 
cation, demanded from time immemorial faith and 
good works as essential requisites in the lives of all who 
were anxious to attain salvation. This time-honored 
doctrine, however, stood in the way and was in opposi- 
tion to his heretofore unheard of system of salvation, 
and, as it could not be made to agree with his fanciful 
and eccentric speculations, he labored in season and 
out of season to dethrone the Church's teaching in the 
minds and in the hearts of the faithful. In the execu- 
tion of his mischievous work, he began to laugh and 
jeer at the idea of good works as necessary for justifi- 
cation. He denounced in unmeasured terms the works 
of supererogation or the counsels of perfection, and 
the vows by which priests, monks, and nuns conse- 
crated themselves to the service of God. In his esti- 
mation, it was an idle thing, fondly invented, that man 
or woman should separate himself or herself from 
the world and be consecrated unreservedly to the 
service of the living God. And all following our Lord 
in the way of self-abnegation, in the way of self-denial, 
in the way of the crucifixion of self and of the flesh 
with all its unholy desires, he completely and totally 



112 The Facts About Luther 

denied, and not only denied but even derided. The 
needlessness of all these and other consecrated 
means of attaining perfection hitherto in use, pro- 
claimed by Luther, proved a new charter of lib- 
erty from bondage of every kind for himself, 
and in the end for multitudes of others. The ex- 
perience of later years record the sad fact that the 
so-called message of emancipation left men, not better, 
but Worse than it found them. The soothing but disas- 
trous doctrine of faith without works could only lead 
to carelessness of life and open up the way to every 
species of unbridled lewdness and immorality. It did 
not bring, as was fondly contemplated, the peace and 
confidence and spiritual freedom expected. The very 
contrary results were everywhere noticeable, for all, 
from Luther down to the last of his misguided fol- 
lowers who denied the necessity of supernatural helps 
and earnest striving in the ways of perfection, were 
universally notable for such indecencies and horrible 
violations of God's law as shock and scandalize every 
impartial reader of the history of the Reformation 
period. 

The denial of the necessity of good works for justifi- 
cation was, however, only a part of Luther's plan for 
the ruin and deception of the unwary. In order to 
give color to his "new experience of salvation," as 
Leimbech calls it, he maintained in his Commentary on 
the Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians that "there is 
an irreconcilable opposition existing between the Law 
and the Gospel." "The Law and the Gospel," he says, 
"are two contrary things which cannot be in harmony 
with each other," and, "no man on earth can properly 
distinguish between the Law and the Gospel." To 
lend weight to this bold and untenable claim, nothing 
daunted, he went so far as to say that "even the man 
Jesus Christ, when in the Garden of Gethsemane, suf- 
fered from such ignorance." (Tischr. I. C. 12. § 19.) 
The imputation implied in this utterance is shocking, 
but we must pass it over for the moment. We feel, 
however, that Luther's ignorance was more feigned 



Luther and Justification 113 



than real because his earlier theological studies dealt 
exhaustively with the question of the Law and the 
Gospel, their nature, order and position in the Divine 
scheme of salvation. If he declared, as he did later, 
that he could not sufficiently realize the question, he 
should not, however, have brazenly stated that "no 
man on earth understood it," for he confessed that his 
own pupils boasted they comprehended the doctrine 
thoroughly and had it "at their fingers , ends." He 
knew, too, that besides his own pupils there were thou- 
sands and thousands of the faithful in his day who 
realized that there was no contradiction between the 
Law and the Gospel and that the New or Evangelical 
Law was no other than the old moral law renewed, 
approved and perfected by Jesus Christ according to 
His own declaration : "Do not think that I am come to 
destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to de- 
stroy, but to fulfill!' 

Luther, however, cared little about misrepresenting 
the belief of the neighbor when he wanted to gain a 
hearing for his own false conceptions. His viewpoint 
was in the circumstances paramount to all else and to 
advance it, he used all his energies regardless of con- 
sequences. In his scheme for the destruction of every- 
thing hitherto held as holy and sacred, it hardly suited 
him to acknowledge the harmony which existed be- 
tween the Law and the Gospel, for he was gradually 
preparing the way for the violation, destruction and 
abandonment of the Decalogue. Having fallen away 
from his original fervor and having become a breaker 
and not an observer of the Commandments, he wanted 
to strike a blow at the source of all morality, and re- 
move, if possible, the very foundation of all moral 
obligation. Despife all the teaching of Christ to the 
effect that the Law was for all men, for all time, and 
for all circumstances, he imagined that a declaration of 
freedom from the bondage thereof would make his 
position more tenable and his teaching more savory 
and acceptable to the crowd he desired to win to his 
cause. 



114 The Facts About Luther 

Luther, of course, wanted the Law announced. He 
preached and taught it ; he inserted it in his catechism 
and he exhorted his followers to recite it daily. Never- 
theless, he, at the same time, warned against allowing 
the Law to have any influence on the conscience, for 
then it would become, as he said, "a sink of heresies 
and blasphemies/' (Wittenb. V. 272 b.) He consid- 
ered the advocacy of the Law merely useful "to show 
to man that he is a sinner, to terrify him in that way 
and make him throw himself upon Christ." (De 
Wette, III, 307.) To crush the "horrible monster and 
stiff necked brute" of pride in man who is ever in- 
clined to think much of himself and of his works, 
"God wants," he says, "a great and strong hammer, 
that is, the Law, for it reveals to man his absolute 
inability to keep it. The laws have been given only, 
that man should see in them the impossibility of doing 
good and that he should learn to despair of himself. 
. . . As soon as man begins to learn and to feel, from 
the laws of God his own incapacity ... he becomes 
thoroughly humbled and annihilated in his own eyes." 
(Walch, XIX, 1212.) 

Although Luther advocated the Law and wished 
it known by all, he, at the same time, declared that 
"the moral duties it enjoined were impossible of fulfill- 
ment and incited not love, but hatred of God." "Lex 
summum odium Dei affert." In this favorite declara- 
tion he gives a new proof of the contradictory charac- 
ter of his mind and advances a teaching which is di- 
rectly opposed to that of faith and experience. To 
claim that the fulfillment of the Law is impossible is as 
impious as it is blasphemous, inasmuch as it imputes 
to God the injustice of commanding us to do something 
above our strength. How could Gocl, who is infinitely 
wise and good, command His creatures to do anything 
impossible to them? If the accomplishment of the 
Law seems to be above the powers of nature, do we 
not know, and have we not been assured that God is 
careful to offer all His Divine helps to enable the will 
of man not only to fulfill all the duties imposed by the 



Luther and Justification 



115 



Law, but also to make him experience pleasure and 
happiness in their observance? Does not the Holy 
Ghost declare by the mouth of the Psalmist, "Blessed 
is the man that feareth the Lord. He shall delight 
exceedingly in His Commandments ,, ? The example of 
the Saints of all ages, conditions and climes furnish 
unanswerable proof of this truth. God's grace is 
ever ready to help men of good will. He will no 
more fail us than He failed the saints. The same faith, 
the same hope, the same love, the same sacraments, the 
same Gospel they had will assuredly help us, as they 
helped them, to subdue passion and attain to holiness 
of behavior. With all the Divine helps God has 
placed at man's disposal, is it not easier to fulfill the 
Law than to break it? Besides, is it not more honor- 
able to obey God than passion? Is it not sweeter to 
have the soul filled with peace by repressing passion 
than gnawed with remorse through the gratification, of 
irregular inclinations ? 

The impiety and blasphemy of Luther is all the more 
remarkable when after stating the impossibility of ful- 
filling the Law, he unblushingly declares that "the Law 
incites not love but hatred of God." Every reader of 
the Scripture knows how false and unfounded this 
statement is. The Law of God is the law of love. It 
can never inspire hatred in the mind or heart of men 
of good will towards its Framer. Christ's words prove 
this to a certainty. He says: "If any one love Me, he 
will keep My word and My Father will love him, and 
we will come to him and will make our abode with 
him." St. Paul expresses the same teaching when he 
says that the "fulfilling of the law is love." St. John 
also confirms this truth in the memorable words: 
"We have known and have believed the charity which 
God hath to us. God is charity, and he that abideth in 
charity, abideth in God and God in him." Thus faith 
and experience unite in proclaiming that not only is 
the observance of the Commandments possible, but 
their fulfillment incites not hatred but love of God. 

Luther at one time knew all this, but later on his 



116 



The Facts About Luther 



anxiety to place opposition between the Law and the 
Gospel, and to define the place the Law occupies in the 
religion of Christ and the purpose for which it exists, 
warped his judgment and blinded his intellect regarding 
the true state of the question. All his efforts to explain 
the necessity of the Decalogue, inasmuch as he admits 
it at all, are not too clear, and the line he draws be- 
tween the Law and the Gospel is not only unsatisfac- 
tory, but most disappointing. Here are his own words. 
"The Law," he says, "points out what man has to Ho, 
whereas the Gospel unfolds the gifts God is willing 
to confer on man. The former we cannot observe, 
the latter we receive and apprehend by faith." (Tischr. 
I. C. 12 § 7.) "The Gospel," he would have us believe, 
"does not announce what we must do or omit . . . 
but bids us open our hands to receive gifts, and says, 
Behold, dear man, this is what God has done for you : 
for your sake He made His Son assume human nature. 
This believe and accept, and you shall be saved. The 
Gospel only shows us the gifts of God, not what we 
have to give to God or to do for Him as is the wont 
of the Law." (Walch, III, 4.) 

Luther was right in saying that the Gospel unfolds 
the gifts of God to mankind, but he erred grievously 
in declaring that it did not announce "what we must do 
or omit." Every reader of the Gospel knows that 
Christ, who was sent by His Father to instruct and 
guide us to perfection, not only promulgated the law 
anew, but ever and always insisted on its observance. 
When the young man asked Christ the question, "What 
shall I do to be saved?" He clearly answered: "If thou 
wilt enter into life keep the Commandments." Now, 
the Decalogue, which is the application of the great 
precept of the love of God and one's neighbor, enjoins 
two kinds of precepts : some positive, commanding cer- 
tain things to be done; others negative, forbidding 
certain things to be done; all having for their end to 
teach us the acts by which we should exercise our char- 
ity and protect this virtue from injury and even de- 
struction. The law of God is the law o£ charity, and 



Luther and Justification 117 



charity is active in doing good and avoiding evil. It 
manifests itself not merely by words, but by works; 
the works prescribed in the Commandments. To pro- 
duce the works of charity is a duty not to be shirked. 
It binds at all times and under all circumstances if we 
would secure happiness in this world and in the next. 
Moreover, the observance of the Commandments shows 
God that He ^s always Our Lord and Master having 
the power and the right to rule over and command His 
servants and children. It is from this point of view 
that we must contemplate the Decalogue, if we would 
understand the profound meaning of the Saviours 
numerous words regarding the sweetness of the X)ivine 
law. To select one out of many we find Him saying : 
"Take up My yoke upon you and learn of Me, because 
I am meek and humble of heart; and you shall find 
rest to your souls. For My yoke is sweet and My bur- 
den light," which is the same as to say, "My yoke is 
love," the only end of all my precepts is to preserve 
love ; preserve it "and you shall find rest to your souls/' 
It is in Charity, then, that all the Christian religion 
consists. It is that which distinguishes the true Chris- 
tian; it is that which makes him really a child of God, 
a member of the mystical body of Christ, the living 
temple of the Holy Ghost, an heir and citizen of the 
Kingdom of Heaven. Without charity all is useless 
and profits nothing to salvation. Neither faith nor 
miracles, nor the most exalted gifts, nor the most gen- 
erous alms, nor even martyrdom in the midst of flames, 
can profit us anything toward salvation without charity 
or the love of God. "If I have not charity," St. Paul 
says, "I am nothing and it profiteth one nothing." 

Luther Endeavored with all his power to draw a 
distinction between Christ and His promulgation of the 
law. He wanted to have it appear that the Saviour of 
men should be recognized for His quality of mercy 
and not for His justice. The thought of Christ as a 
judge angered by sin was abhorrent to him. All his 
special pleading in this direction could not, however, 
still the behests of conscience which ever and always 



118 The Facts About Luther 



bears witness to the law and testifies to its binding 
force. The precepts of the Decalogue are so fixedly 
impressed on the heart of man that it is impossible 
to violate these without feeling that the Almighty, who 
is set at defiance by the sinner, will surely avenge all 
and every transgression if not atoned for. Man, Luther 
admitted, bears within his heart this voice, which 
reproaches him with a badly spent life and which 
threatens him with God's judgment ; but, he calls "this 
voice the voice of the devil," "who tries to cheat man/' 
and "who comes under the appearance of Christ and 
transforms himself into an angel of light/' "to frighten 
us with the Law." (Wittenb. V. 321, 321B. Cfr. 382.) 
This fanciful notion, confounding the voice of con- 
science with the voice of man's enemy, brought neither 
peace nor consolation to his hearers. The better in- 
formed realized, in spite of all his strange advice, that 
the voice of conscience still asserted itself and bore 
indubitable witness to sin and the fear of its punish- 
ment. Conscience can never be dethroned and man 
cannot help realizing the presence of sin and being 
terrified at the thought of hell and eternal death. 
Luther knew all this, but he persisted in his dogged op- 
position until we find him in the agony of despair 
declaring with the uttermost boldness that "Man must 
persuade himself that he has nothing to do with the 
law and that no sins can condemn him ; nay, let him, so 
to say, boast of his sinfulness and thus take the weapon 
out of the devil's hand. When the devil rushes at you 
and tries to drown you in the flood and the deluge of 
your sins . . . say to him, 'Why do you wish to make 
a saint of me, why do you expect to find justice in me, 
who has nothing but sins and most grievous ones ?' " 
(Wittenb. V. 281 B.) "In fact, what would be the use 
of Christ, if the law and our transgressions of the law 
could still annoy and terrify us?" Therefore, he says, 
"when the conscience is terror-stricken on account of 
the law and struggles with the thought of God's judg- 
ment, do not consult reason or the law ... act exactly 
as if you had never heard of the law of God." (Wit- 



Luther and Justification 



119 



tenb. V. 303 B.) "Answer: There is a time to live 
and a time to die ; there is a time to hear the law and 
a time to despise the law . . . Let the law be off 
and let the Gospel reign." (Wittenb. V. 304 B.) "The 
body with its members/' he says, "has to be subject 
to the law, it has to carry its burden like a donkey, but 
leave the donkey with its burden in the valley when 
you ascend the mountain. For the conscience has noth- 
ing to do with law, works, earthly justice. We want 
indeed 'the light of the Evangelium' to understand 
this, and in this light the meaning is : 'Keep the law, by 
all means ; but if you do not, you need not be troubled 
in your conscience, for the transgression of the law 
cannot possibly condemn you/ " (Wittemb. V. 304.) 

Some of Luther's admirers imagine that under the 
Church's teaching the people did not understand the 
Ten Commandments and they claim forthwith that 
their hero came and brought back the true conscious- 
ness of them and that whatever he said about them is 
to be understood as an antithesis between grace and 
law in the life of the Christian. If this be so, then it be- 
hooves his admirers to tell us in what possible connec- 
tion is it permissible for a Christian gentleman to say, "if 
we allow them (the Ten Commandments) any influence 
in our conscience, they become the cloak of all evil, 
heresies, and blasphemies?" Is this the "antithesis 
between grace and law?" Does not Luther make it 
plain enough when he says, "The Catholic theologians 
are asses who do not know what they maintain, when 
they say that Christ has only abrogated the ceremonial 
law of the Old Testament, and not also the Ten Com- 
mandments?" (Epistle to the Galatians.) Is the 
abrogation of the Ten Commandments an "antithesis?" 
"That shall serve you as a true rule that wherever the 
Scriptures orders and commands to do good works,, 
you must so understand it that the Scriptures forbid 
good works." (Wittenb. ed. 2, 171. 6.) "If you 
should not sin against the Gospel, then be on your 
guard against good works; avoid them as one avoids 
a pest." (Jena. ed. 1. 318 b.) In what connection is 



120 The Facts About Luther 



it compatible with a Christian character to counsel 
against good works as against a "pest" and make it an 
"antithesis to grace?" Or, under what circumstances 
is it allowable for a "man of God" and a "Reformer" 
to say of Moses, God's chosen servant, that he should 
be looked upon "with suspicion as the worst heretic, 
as a damned and excommunicated person ; yea, worse 
than the Pope and the Devil?" (Jena. 4, 98. 6.) "A 
pure heart enlightened by God must not dirty, soil itself 
with the law. Thus let the Christian understand that 
it matters not whether he keeps it or not ; yea, he may 
do what is forbidden and leave undone what is com- 
manded, for neither is a sin." (W. XI. 447.) Does 
this indicate a very reverential spirit toward the law 
of God and was this intended to mean that the law was 
to be a guide for the life of regenerates? Is it thus 
that "Luther came and brought back the true conscious- 
ness of them (the Ten Commandments) to the peo- 
ple?" If this be so, then the "moral life and progress," 
his friends claim for his doctrine, has its root in the 
worst days of paganism, and not in the teachings of 
Jesus Christ and of His Church. 

As might be expected from one who strove to mini- 
mize the importance and influence of the Law in the 
lives of men, Luther had scant respect for him whom 
God selected to proclaim His will to the peoples and 
the nations from Sion's Mount. This mouth-piece of 
God became the special subject of his untiring and 
ceaseless abuse and vituperation. He not only acknowl- 
edges his opposition to Moses, but he urges it with all 
the vehemence he is master of. He went so far in his 
antagonism that he proclaimed the Law-giver a most 
dangerous man and the embodiment of everything that 
can torment the soul. His hatred of the Prophet was 
so deep-rooted that on one occasion he cried out : "To 
the gallows with Moses." He disliked him because he 
thought that he insisted too strongly on the Law and 
its observance. In order to minimize his mission and 
destroy his influence he boldly and untruthfully as- 
serted that Moses "was sent to the Jewish people only 



Luther and Justification 



121 



and had nothing whatever to do with Gentiles and 
Christians/' His advice to all who bothered themselves 
with the Law-giver was to "chase that stammering and 
stuttering Moses," as he called him, "with his law to 
the Jews and not allow his terrible threats to intimidate 
them. ,, "Moses must ever be looked upon," he says, 
"with suspicion, even as upon a heretic, excommuni- 
cated, damned, worse than the Pope and the Devil." 
(Comment. in~Gal.) The scurrilous language applied 
to God's messenger reaches its depths of infamy when 
he says further: "I will not have Moses with his law, 
for he is the enemy of the Lord Christ ... we must 
put away thoughts and disputes about the law, when- 
ever the conscience becomes terrified and feels God's 
anger against sin. Instead of that it will be better to 
sing, to eat, to drink, to sleep, to be merry in spite of 
the devil." (Tischr. L. C. 12. §. 17.) "No greater 
insult can be offered to Christ than to suppose that 
He has come to give commandments, to make a sort 
of Moses of him." (Tischr. S. 66). "Only the mad 
and blind Papists do such a thing." (Wittenb. V. 
292 B.) "Christ's work consists in this: to fulfill the 
law for us, not to give laws to us and to redeem us." 
(Ibid.) "The devil makes of Christ a mere Moses." 
(Walch, VIII. 58.) 

Luther evidently was not any more an admirer of 
Moses than he was, at times, of the Decalogue. His 
personal hatred for the great advocate of the law was 
roused because of his zeal in enforcing the obligation 
of keeping the Commandments. The ridicule he heaped 
on Moses passed to the masses and not a criminal from 
that time on that has not wished that the Law-giver 
and the Commandments he proclaimed had never ex- 
isted. To displace in men's minds and hearts the wise 
and beneficent code of morality God gave to mankind 
is nothing less than criminal. There is not one of our 
interests that the Decalogue does not surround with th^ 
most sacred barriers. Upon its observance depend the 
glory, tranquillity and prosperity of mankind in this 
world and their felicity in the next. To trifle with 



122 The Facts About Luther 



Heaven-given law and weaken its importance is a 
scandal and can only result in complete disrespect and 
disregard for all legitimate authority, a curse which is 
unfortunately not unknown in the world of to-day. 
In the presence of the general depravity of the hour, 
it is high time to proclaim from the house-tops that 
the sweet and gentle Gospel of the Saviour of men 
still exists in all its pristine beauty and force, that it 
tells plainly and clearly what all must do or omit, and 
that it is only by following its sublime injunctions that 
men can be freed from the error, impiety, libertinism, 
hatred, discord and all the other evils which makes life 
in the world to-day a long and bitter torment. 

Luther, as we learn from the evidence presented, 
held very singular views regarding sin and its com- 
mission. We do not wish to insinuate that he actually 
taught and approved sin, for we know that he did as a 
rule instruct men to avoid violations of the law and 
repress the concupiscence leading thereto. But we do 
hold that his whole theory of justification by faith 
alone and his denial of moral freedom, making "God 
the author of what is evil in us," necessarily broke 
down the usual barriers against sin, and that his moral 
recommendations very often in the plainest of language 
did actually and openly encourage sin. His consum- 
ing thought is to "believe." "No other sin," he says, 
"exists in the world save unbelief. All others are mere 
trifles. . . . All sins shall be forgiven if we only believe 
in Christ." This thought of the all-forgiving nature 
of faith so dominated his mind that it excluded the 
notion of contrition, penance, good works or effort on 
the part of the believer and thus his teaching destroyed 
root and branch the whole idea of human culpability 
and responsibility for the breaking of the Command- 
ments. 

Now, let us see the teaching of Luther in its practical 
working. He was frequently asked for advice on 
moral questions by his friends who were grievously 
troubled on account of certain temptations and who 
desired to know the best means to be used to overcome 



Luther and Justification 123 



the affliction of their souls. One of these was Jerome 
Weller, a former pupil of Luther's and one of the table 
companions who took notes for the "Table-Talk." This 
young man was long and grievously tormented with 
anxiety of mind and was unable to quiet, by means of 
the new Evangel, the scruples of conscience which were 
driving him to despair. When he asked for advice in 
his sad state of soul Luther sent him the following 
strange reply f*. "Poor Jerome Weller, you have temp- 
tations ; they must be overcome. When the devil comes 
to tempt and harass you with thoughts of the kind you 
allude to, have recourse at once to conversation, drink 
more freely, be jocose and playful and even indulge 
some sin in hatred of the evil spirit and to torment him, 
to leave him no room to make us over-zealous about 
the merest trifles ; otherwise we are beaten if we are 
too nervously sensitive about guarding against sin. If 
the devil says to you, 'Will you not stop drinking, an- 
swer him : I will drink all the more because you forbid 
it ; I will drink great draughts in the name and to the 
honor of Jesus Christ/ Imitate me. I never drink so 
well, I never eat so much, I never enjoy myself so well 
at table as when I am vexing the devil who is prepared 
to mock and harass me. Oh, that I could paint sin in 
a fair light, so as to mock at the devil and make him 
see that I acknowledge no sin and am not conscious 
of having committed any! I tell you, we must put all 
the Ten Commandments, with which the devil tempts 
and plagues us so greatly, out of sight and out of mind. 
If the devil upbraids us with our sins and declares us 
to be deserving of death and hell, then we must say: 
T confess that I have merited death and hell/ but what 
then ? Are you for that reason to be damned eternally ? 
By no means. T know One Who suffered and made 
satisfaction for me, viz., Jesus Christ, the Son of 
God. Where He is, there also I shall be." (De Wette, 
i V. 188.) 

Here we 1 have a characteristic sample of Luther's 
strange asceticism and astounding liberalism. How 
different all this is from what Christ and His Church 



1 



124 The Facts About Luther 

propound for the expiation of sin committed and the 
prevention of its recurrence. According to these, we 
are under the obligation to resist the irregular ten- 
dencies of the heart and to crucify it with its immoder- 
ate desires. If Luther had been a real friend of Wel- 
ter's and a true master of the spiritual life, why did 
he not counsel him to avoid sin and cultivate a more 
intimate union with God through prayer, penance, and 
the reception of the sacraments ? Surely he must have 
known that there is a certain demon, according to the 
words of Jesus Christ, which can be conquered only 
by fasting and prayer. But the salutary remedies of 
the Master did not appeal to this strange man who 
thought that faith in Christ alone washes all sin away. 
He preferred, as he said, "to leave these fine recipes to 
the stupid Papists." Abhorring the thought of penance 
and mortification and denying the necessity of good 
works, nothing, however, more efficacious might be 
expected than the vile and pernicious prescription he 
gave to Weller. The true spiritual director was never 
known to advise more "liberal potations," "to seek com- 
pany," and "to indulge in jest and play" in order to foil 
the devil. Like the blind leader of the blind, he wanted 
something unheard of before, something novel, some- 
thing startling to put the devil to flight and that, in his 
estimation, was always when troubled with scruples of 
conscience to be heedless of sin and indulge even in 
more frivolity than Satan suggested. Thus with a bold- 
ness that was never equalled, he unblushingly recom- 
mended remedies, which to say the least, were most 
dangerous to weak and afflicted souls and calculated 
to undermine the binding force of the Decalogue in 
the eyes and thoughts of men. Only one mentally 
unbalanced and spiritually deranged could advance 
such a rule of conduct in defiance of all the proprieties 
prescribed and sanctioned by law and order. 

The unholy counsels which Luther gave to Weller, to 
despise sin and to meet temptation by frivolity, are 
explained in greater fulness in the "Table-Talk," a 
work which was cdmpiled by his pupils and in which 



Luther and Justification 



125 



his teaching is Recorded in most disgusting detail. 
"How often," he says, "have I taken with my wife 
those liberties which nature permits merely in ordei 
to get rid of Satan's temptations. Yet all to no pur- 
pose, for he refused to depart : for Satan, as the author 
of death, has depraved our nature to such an extent 
that we will not admit any consolation. Hence I advise 
every one who is able to drive away these Satanic 
thoughts by diverting his mind, to do so, for instance, 
by thinking of a pretty girl, of money-making, or of 
drink, or, in fine, by means of some other vivid emo- 
tion." (Colloq. ed. Bindsell, 2 p. 299.) "Let us fix 
our mind on other thoughts" he had also said to Schla- 
ginhaufen, "on thoughts of dancing, or of a pretty girl, 
that also is good." Such, according to his own confes- 
sion, were the means he employed himself and advised 
others to use to get rid of the disquieting tinges of con- 
science. Had he desired to "recall the teaching and 
practise of the Catholic Church how vastly different 
would have been his advice to the sorely tried in their 
moments of temptations when prayer for God's help, 
true htfmility and earnest striving after a change of 
heart are alone efficacious. 

Luther's fullest contempt for violations of the Deca- 
logue are found in the famous letter he addressed from 
the Wartburg under date of August 1st, 1521, to his 
most intimate friend, Melanchthon, to encourage him 
with regard to possible sins of the past and prepare 
him to meet temptations in the future. The reader 
who is anxious to see the letter in its entirety can find 
it in Grisar, Volume III, page 196. His advice is 
couched in the following words : "Be a sinner, and sin 
boldly, but believe more boldly still. . . . We must sin 
as long as we are what we are ... sin shall not drag 
us away from Him (Christ) even should we commit 
fornication or murder, thousands and thousands of 
times a day" provided the sinner' only believed. Thus 
he repeats, against the traditional view of sin and grace, 
his teaching of justification by faith alone. 

In his estimation sin now must be regarded as some- 



126 The Facts About Luther 



thing harmless in view of the satisfying redemption of 
Christ by faith. This is the culmination of all his 
practical ideas of religion. "Be a sinner/' he says, 
"sin boldly and fearlessly." The command embodied 
in the unauspicious words sets at naught all the laws 
of morality and gives wide scope to human freedom 
and to disorder. The thought of the degrading recom- 
mendation makes the blood run cold in the veins of 
decent, law-abiding people. In the face of the infa- 
mous suggestion, it is difficult to conceive how men 
with any pretentions to reverence for the Decalogue 
can be found to designate one, who so unblushingly 
urges its violation, as a "dear man of God." If the 
author of such an infamous suggestion, as is involved 
in the words, "sin boldly," was not a child of Satan 
none ever labored so strenuously in advancing his soul- 
destroying principles. 

The defenders of Luther do not deny the recom- 
mendation he addressed to Melanchthon. To hide its 
grossness, however, they, in the blasphemy of despair, 
have edited and interpreted the recommendation so 
as to give it a turn and a meaning altogether unwar- 
ranted and untenable. Luther said : "Be a sinner and 
sin boldly." His supporters, to hoodwink and deceive 
their followers, clai^ that the imperative mood used by 
Luther is not here Id be read imperatively and accord- 
ing to them, "Be a^sinner and sin boldly" means "even 
supposing thou art a sinner and dost sin boldly." This 
interpretation is ingenious, but like all their methods of 
defense to escape from the infamy of Luther's teach- 
ing, as Anderdon remarks, "the deploying of impera- 
tives into subjunctives, suppositions, exaggerations, 
reductions ad absurdum, will never make the impera- 
tive mood read otherwise than as a clear, distinct in- 
junction. Until some more formidable line of defense 
be invented, we must take Luther's words to mean, as 
they manifestly indicate, a recommendation, an exhor- 
tation and an injunction to mutiny, rebellion and dis- 
obedience to the Supreme Law-giver who directed all 
to observe and not disrespect His Commandments." 



Luther and Justification 



127 



Luther's pronouncement, "Be a sinner and sin boldly," 
has only one meaning, namely, a command to transgress 
the Divine law, insult God and open up the way to the 
commission of crime and iniquity. If Luther knew his 
Bible as thoroughly as his advocates suppose, how 
could he, unless he was devoid of the elementary in- 
stinct of common propriety, advise his friend Melanch- 
thon to provoke the divine justice by the commission 
of sin an4 expose him thereby to the wilful risk of 
eternal chastisement? Had Luther been a true friend 
to Melanchthon and a trusted spiritual guide, he would 
have counselled him to cease to "sin," and not "to have 
strong sins," for only then faith in Christ brings con- 
solation, joy and peace. Had he not been dominated 
by his unbounded self-sufficiency, he might have re- 
called with profit the Divine warning so often repeated 
in Scripture: "Flee from sins as from the face of a 
serpent ; for if thou comest near them, they will take 
hold of thee. The teeth thereof are the teeth of a 
lion, killing the souls of men. All iniquity is like a 
two-edged sword; there is no remedy for the wound 
thereof." (Ecclesiasticus XXI, i, 3.) To recall these 
or other words of Scripture to Melanchthon would have 
been a kindness, but this was not Luther's way once 
his mind was made up to minimize, if possible, the 
influence of the Commandments in the lives of men. 

When we consider his own behavior and the dan- 
gerous advice he gave his friends, we are led to 
believe that only one devoid of his senses or one mor- 
ally weak could condone, palliate and defend sin, 
which is always contemptible both from a natural and 
a supernatural point of view, and is ever a base act 
of cowards who are too indifferent to conform their 
lives to the Divine code of morality. Account as we 
may for Luther's suggestion to Melanchthon, the fact 
remains that he brazenly trifled with the soul-destroy- 
ing principle of sin to spread corruption from that day 
to this in the body politic. The debasing teaching he 
shamefully advanced struck a mighty blow at the 
foundation on which all laws repose, and, as might 



128 



The Facts About Luther 



be expected, a deplorable relaxation of principle among 
the deluded came along, as a matter of course, to curse 
the earth from that day to this. Following the ex- 
ample of Luther, many ever since have been loud in 
their .praise of sin, and at times the more revolting 
it is the greater are the encomiums of it. 

It cannot be denied that Luther taught that "good 
works are useless/' that "they are sin," and, in fact, 
"impossible." In his "Babylonian Captivity" (Chap, 
de Bapt.) he says, "The way to heaven is narrow; if 
you wish to pass through it, throw away your good 
works." "Those pious souls," he says further, "who 
do good to gain the kingdom of heaven, not only will 
never succeed, but they must even be reckoned among 
the impious ; and it is more important to guard them 
against good works than against sin." (Wittenb. VI. 
1 60.) Thus, good works, the practise of piety, and 
the observance of the Divine commandments, the only 
way, according to Jesus Christ, which leads to eternal 
life, are in his estimation troublesome superfluities, of 
which Christian liberty must rid us. Rather, accord- 
ing to this false teacher, they are invincible obstacles 
to salvation, if one places the least reliance upon them. 
"Faith alone," said he, "is necessary for Justification : 
nothing else is commanded or forbidden." "Believe, 
and henceforth you are as holy as St. Peter." 

To bring these horrible doctrines, which sought to 
take from the sacraments their efficacy and saving 
grace into disrepute was his avoved object. The 
utility and importance of the sacramental system of 
the Church once destroyed', it may easily be imagined 
what scope would be given to the passions and how the 
greatest excesses were likely to be committed. The 
influence exerted by the doctrine we have just men- 



deterioration of morals, both public and private. <C)f 
this the writings of Luther's age and of that immedi- 
ately following furnish incontestable proof. Out of 
many unsuspected Lutheran authorities we take one 
who was Luther's pupil and a boarder in his house, 



tioned immediately produced 




Luther and Justification 129 



namely, John Mathesius. He complains of the spread 
of immorality, infidelity and oppression brought about 
through the introduction of the Reformation and states 
the cause of it all in these words: "Many false 
brethren, who flatter the people and ascribe all to the 
justification by faith, do not wish to hear anything of 
good works, but say openly : only have faith and do 
as you please, good or evil, it will not harm you as 
long as you are predestinated to be saved." The same 
notorious fact concerning the deterioration of morals . 
is referred to in the sermons, correspondence, and 
other writings of the "Reformers," and those of the 
Humanists, who, like Erasmus, at that time sided de- 
cidedly neither with the Reformers nor with the 
Church. So, too, do Hume, Robertson, Macauley, and 
Lecky, even while they, each in his own way, endeavor 
to disparage the Catholic religion. 

Immediately on the preaching of this doctrine, crimes 
increased in number and enormity. In all classes 
frivolity and every kind of vice, sin and disgrace were 
much greater than formerly. Men quickly learned the 
lessons taught them both by the precepts and the exam- 
ple of their master. Setting up the rule unfolded to 
them for their guidance they scoffed at and defied 
authority, secular and spiritual. In the name of "Jus- 
tification by faith alone," they dispensed themselves 
from performing good works and without activity in 
the cause of goodness, they gradually fell into serious 
breaches of the Divine law. A rigid Pharisaical sever- 
ity on certain points was united with utter license as 
regards many of the plainest obligations of religion 
and morality. The statute books of the several princi- 
palities of which Germany was then composed, of 
Belgium and the Netherlands, of France and Switzer- 
land, and of England, the severe measures resorted 
to by the magistrates to repress general lawlessness, of 
which they complain in their official reports and declare 
themselves unable to check, furnish indisputable evi- 
dence directly to the point. But it is needless to mul- 
tiply proofs. We call Luther himself as witness and 



130 The Facts About Luther 



give his own declaration as to the effects produced 
upon morality and religion by the new gospel of "faith 
without works." 

"I would not be astonished," he says, "if God should 
open the gates and windows of hell, and snow or rain 
down devils, or rain down on our heads fire and brim- 
stone, or bury us in a fiery abyss as he did Sodom and 
Gomorrah. Had Sodom and Gomorrah received the 
gifts that have been granted to us, had they seen our 
visions and received our instructions, they would yet 
be standing. They were a thousand times less culpa- 
ble than Germany, for they had not received the Word 
of God from their preachers. ... If Germany will 
act thus, I am ashamed to be one of her children or 
speak her language ; and if I were permitted to impose 
silence on my conscience, I would call in the Pope and 
assist him and his minions to forge new chains for 
us. Formerly, when we were the slaves of Satan, 
when we profaned the name of God . . . money could 
be procured for endowing churches, for raising semi- 
naries, for maintaining superstition. Now that we 
know the Divine word, that we have learned to honor 
the blood of our Martyr-God, no one wishes to give any- 
thing. The children are neglected, and no one teaches 
them to serve God." 

"Since the downfall of Popery, and the cessations of 
excommunications and spiritual penalties, the people 
have learned to despise the word of God. They care 
no longer for the churches; they have ceased to fear 
and honor God. ... I would wish if it were possible 
to leave these men without preacher or pastor, and 
let them live like swine. There is no longer any fear 
or love of God among them. After throwing off the 
yoke of the Pope every one wishes to live as he 
pleases." 

This declaration of Luther is significant, and testi- 
monies from almost every writer of eminence, who 
touches upon the state of society as regards religion 
and morals in every country where Protestantism had 
a foothold in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 



Luther and Justification 



131 



might be adduced in confirmation of it. So notorious 
was the debauchery of the followers of Luther that 
it became a common saying when persons proposed to 
engage in drunkenness and revelry: "We will spend 
the day like Lutherans" 

The new Gospel did not even make Luther himself 
better. He said : "I confess . . . that I am more negli- 
gent than I was under the Pope and there is now 
nowhere such an amount of earnestness under the 
Gospel, as was formerly seen among monks and 
priests." (Walch, IX. 1311.) "If God," he says, 
"had not closed my eyes and if I had foreseen these 
scandals, I would never have begun to teach the Gos- 
pel. ,, (Walch, VI, 920.) 

"But it is not necessary," as a writer in the American 
Catholic Quarterly Review says, "to go back to past 
ages of the so-called Reformation to decide whether it 
has produced a real reformation as regards morality. 
It is only necessary to look upon facts existing all 
around us to-day. Protestantism has existed now for 
nearly four hundred years and has had ample time to 
show what improvement it can effect or has effected 
as regards morality. Yet, notwithstanding all the 
efforts still made, here and there, to perpetuate the old 
traditional falsehood of the superiority of Protestan- 
tism over the Catholic religion in promoting morality, 
the most thoughtful and candid even of Protestants 
award the palm to Catholicity ; and the general verdict 
of public opinion is fast confirming this decision. It 
is not necessary to refer to official statistics of crime 
and social immorality, which have been published and 
republished, analyzed, and exhaustively discussed by 
such non-Catholic writers as Laing, Mayhew, Wolsey, 
Bayard Taylor, Dr. Bellows, and many others, to prove 
that Protestant countries are not in advance of those 
where Catholicity predominates as respects morality." 

"It is acknowledged by almost all who have any real 
knowledge of the subject that in point of purity of 
morals Catholic Spain and the really Catholic part of 
the people of France and Italy are immeasurably above 



132 The Facts About Luther 



the people of Protestant Germany, Denmark, Sweden 
and Norway; and that judged by every test applicable 
to morality — female chastity, integrity and sobriety — 
Catholic Ireland is far in advance of Protestant Scot- 
land. The inhabitants of Tyrol — during past centuries 
and to-day the most staunch and exclusive Catholic 
population in Europe — beyond all denial, stand above 
the people of Protestant Switzerland with regard to 
morality. The lazzaroni of Naples, for years the stand- 
ing gibe and jest of Protestant travelers, are immeas- 
urably less debased as regards morality than persons on 
the same social plane in England. Coming nearer 
home — for every act of brigandage, murder, or rob- 
bery in Italy and Spain, there might be truthfully re- 
counted ten in the United States/' 

'This brings us still closer to our point. Compare 
the virtue and integrity here, in our country, and in 
England, of the persons who are under the respective 
influences of the Catholic religion and of Protestantism, 
and the general public voice ascribes superiority to the 
former. Where is the boasted morality of New Eng- 
land, the cradle and home of Puritanism? How stand, 
as regards social morals or honesty, the descendants 
of the 'Pilgrim Fathers?' And what are the moral 
consequences of their principles as they have per- 
meated the public mind outside of persons who believe 
in and practise the Catholic religion? Witness the 
countless prosecutions for bigamy, for the violations 
of the obligation of the marriage relation, for adultery 
and seduction ; the applications for divorces, and the 
scandals, frauds, etc. which crow T d the records of our 
courts and the reportorial columns of the newspapers." 

"It seems that God, in His justice, had determined 
summarily and at once to dispel the traditional delu- 
sion of the superiority of Protestantism over the 
Catholic religion in point of morals, and to refute once 
and forever the false charge, so long and persistently 
brought against the latter, by compelling people to open 
their eyes and look at the facts staring them in the 
face." 



Luther and Justification 133 

It is not a pleasant task to tell the story of hideous 
crime, no matter by whom committed. We would that 
there were no sin in the world to record. If we allude 
to the gross immoralities that followed everywhere 
among the peoples that adopted the soul-destroying 
principles announced by Luther, we do so with feel- 
ings of shame, and in self-defense against the gratui- 
tous allegations of our adversaries. We certainly do 
not wish to_£>rove that all Catholics avail themselves 
of the means their Church provides for attaining to 
sanctity of life, nor do we wish to excuse or palliate 
the corruption of morals sometimes found in their be- 
havior. We cannot close our eyes to the painful fact 
that too many professing Catholics, far from living up 
to the teachings of their Church, are sources of melan- 
choly scandal. "It must, however, be that scandals 
come/' but their occasional occurrence among the mem- 
bers of the Church do not invalidate or impair the 
sacred and efficacious means she furnishes for holi- 
ness of life. We know that some Catholics are a dis- 
grace to their religion and that they ought to be much 
better than they are considering the potent means ever 
at their call. Yet^ with Cardinal Gibbons, we will add, 
quoting his words in the Catholic World: "If we are 
not very much better than our neighbors, we are not 
any w r orse ; and are not to be hounded down with the 
cry of vice and immorality by a set of Pharisees who 
are constantly lauding their own superiority, and thank- 
ing God they are so much better than we poor 
Catholics." 

We have been careful in this paper to furnish the 
reader with Luther's own words describing his teach- 
ing on the absolute uselessness of all the hitherto, and 
even now generally accepted means for avoiding sin 
and helpful for attaining sanctification. A cursory 
examination of the system he fathered shows it, as Fr. 
Johnston points out, to be absolutely "at variance with 
all Christian ideas on the subject both before his age 
and even now. Even, a modern Protestant by his de- 
votion to prayer and penance and good works practi- 



134 



The Facts About Luther 



cally repudiates this system of morality of a man whom 
he otherwise so blindly and inconsistently venerates as 
a great 'Reformer/ In fact, such a system is contra- 
dictory to even the most elementary psychology and 
every day experience. It is at variance with the idea 
of penance and sin held by even the non-Christian 
religions such as Buddhism and Brahminism — as such 
it is about the lowest and the most hedonistic in the 
whole history of religions. In a word it is unique. 
There is nothing in Christianity, ancient, medieval or 
modern, like it — nor in any other religion. Followed 
out to its logical conclusion, it can end only in unre- 
stricted moral license. The reason that it is not fol- 
lowed out by Protestants is partly because they practi- 
cally deny in practise the Lutheran faith they hold in 
theory, partly because they are, as a class, densely 
ignorant of the real crass Luther and Lutheranism; 
partly because their very common sense and sense of 
decency and week-day psychology save them from their 
own faith." 

From Luther's own words we learn the distinctly 
heretical and truth destroying character of his teaching 
which struck at the roots of man's relation with God. 
Faith with him, as Anderdon remarks, "was no longer 
what it had been through all previous Christianity, the 
supernatural grace, the gift from Heaven, by which 
man is enabled to accept and to retain a Revelation 
external to himself and in its fullness. It became 
simply a strong persuasion of one's individual accep- 
tance with God. Faith as propounded by the Church 
contemplates God, and what He has said and done, 
warned and promised ; faith as propounded by Luther, 
regards the individual, who takes hold upon and appro- 
priates to himself the results of what God has done. 
The essence of Catholic faith lies in God's Catholic 
or universal truthfulness, projected in outline upon 
His mystical Body, through all place and time. It 
is independent of individual minds and as high 
above 'religious opinions' as the heavens are above the 
earth. The Lutheran faith, so called, is a mongrel 



Luther and Justification 



135 



thing, partly personal belief, partly hope of acceptance, 
except that it rests on a personal assurance, and so is 
allied to presumption. Catholic faith is the mainspring 
of active obedience, 'working one's salvation'; the 
Lutheran substitute is a principle of a dreamy acqui- 
escence, that contemplates "a finished work" on the 
part of the Savior. Again the Church teaches, that 
faith, on the one hand, and on the other hand love or 
the state of grace, though they have great mutual re- 
lations, are distinct gifts. The former may exist with- 
out the other, as in the case of every bad Catholic, who 
will be lost, without true repentance for his personal 
sins, in spite of his baptism and of the most unclouded 
faith. With Luther, faith does not imply distinct dog- 
matic truth; its creed is summed up in this, 'I am a 
justified man ; therefore I cannot lose my faith and fall 
from acceptance ; therefore sin in me is not imputed as 
sin.' " This is Luther's teaching, novel, soothing, agree- 
able to human nature, if you will, but it is not Christ's 
nor that of His Church which is His organ of com- 
municating supernatural truth and the means of ac- 
quiring sanctification. 

Luther's teaching may appeal to such as decline to 
look things in the face and want the subjective in re- 
ligion, in lieu of the objective dogmatic truth; but it 
can never appeal to the enlightened of God who know 
that His will is their salification, and, that they must 
labor in this life by good works, by prayer, by the 
observance of the Commandments, and the reception 
of the Sacraments, to make their calling and election 
sure. Faith and good works are the only terms on 
which men can purchase happiness here and hereafter ; 
every other scheme is a deceit of Lucifer to draw souls 
away from the love and service of God. 

This statement is not made without foundation. 
Read Luther's work against 'The Mass and the Or- 
dination of Priests," where he tells of his famous dis- 
putation with the "father of lies" who accosted him 
"at midnight" and spoke to him with "a deep, powerful 
voice," causing "the sweat to break forth" from his 



136 The Facts About Lut h er 



brow and his "heart to tremble and beat." In that 
celebrated conference, of which he was an unexcep- 
tional witness and about which he never entertained 
the slightest doubt, he says plainly and unmistakingly 
that "the devil spoke against the Mass, and Mary and 
the Saints" and that, moreover, "Satan gave him the 
most unqualified approval of his doctrine of justifica- 
tion by faith alone." Who now, we ask in all sincerity, 
can be found, except those appallingly blind to truth, 
to accept such a man, approved by the enemy of souls, 
as a spiritual teacher and entrust to his guidance their 
eternal welfare? 



CHAPTER V. 



Luther on the Church and the Pope. 

ONE of the most certain and best established facts 
in the records of mankind is the existence of 
the Catholic Church, and her admirable career through- 
out the ages. 

As the true Messias, Jesus had come to found the 
Kingdom of God on earth — that visible and universal 
kingdom, that n'ew alliance, which, according to the 
prophets, He should inaugurate for all ages to come. 
And, in point of fact, Jesus founded this Kingdom 
by instituting His Church. He foretold the persecu- 
tions that she would meet, and the continual struggles 
that she would have to endure in all the centuries ; 
but He declared that the powers of the enemy would 
never prevail against His Church, because He will be 
with her, and she will last to the end of the world. 
And the Church, which has now existed for nearly 
twenty centuries, stands before all as an undeniable 
fact attesting the fulfillment of this promise. 

The Divinity of the Christian ^religion is a fact which 
all the efforts of sophistical criticism are powerless to 
deny or dispute. Witness its rapid and wonderful 
propagation, notwithstanding the thousands and thou- 
sands of obstacles that opposed it ; its preservation un- 
changed amid continual terrible assaults ; the testimony 
of millions and millions of martyrs who died for the 
faith ; the sanctity of the Church in spite of the defects 
of some of her members; the existence of miracles, 
which illuminate the history of the Church, and even 
to-day occur before the eyes of unbelievers themselves; 
the excellence and sublimity of the morals and dogmas 
of the Christian religion, with which those of other 
faiths can bear no comparison; the adherence of the 
greatest intellects to the teachings . of Christianity. 
Weigh all these facts and behold so many unanswer- 
able arguments that demonstrate the Divinity of the 
religion which Jesus Christ established in order that 



138 



The Facts About Luther 



all men for all time should come to salvation. All 
considered, therefore, we may conclude with Richard 
of St. Victor: "O Lord! if we are mistaken, it is 
Thou who has led us astray; because this faith is 
proved by such signs and prodigies that Thou alone 
couldst work them." 

Luther, in the earlier period of his life, realized that 
he and the rest of men could come to salvation only 
by the knowledge and practise of this Religion, of 
which Jesus Christ is the Soul and the Founder. He 
knew, as demonstrated by Faith and Reason, that 
Jesus Christ and true Religion are only to be found 
in the Catholic Church, where alone the Master 
teaches, dispenses His graces and communicates His 
Divine spirit. In common with every believer of his 
time he was aware of the existence of this Church 
and he recognized that this Church, as originally estab- 
lished in the land of his birth and as it had prevailed 
there for centuries, was in harmony with that pre- 
vailing throughout Christianity and dating back beyond 
all civil institutions, and was the one sole organization 
established by Christ and endowed by Him with per- 
petuity to preach His Gospel for the salvation of the 
world. As a layman he knew all this, as a priest he 
taught all this, and as a doctor of Divinity he was 
ever prepared to advocate and defend all this against 
all comers. For years he continued true to his con- 
victions and to all appearances exemplified them in his 
daily life. But, as time went on, he gradually became 
remiss in the discharge of his spiritual duties and little 
by little came to abandon them entirely; wherefore he 
lost the graces of his vocation and in consequence his 
faith diminished and his allegiance to the Church 
weakened. By his own admission, as we have seen, 
he grew careless in the performance of his monastic 
duties and daily violated the plain and sacred obliga- 
tions to which he bound himself voluntarily by most 
solemn vows. Owing to the habitual neglect of prayer 
and meditation and the constant infraction of the rules 
of his Order, he went down the scale of perfection 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 139 

step by step, until, as is invariably the case in such 
conditions, his' perception of divine truth waned and 
grew weaker day by day until finally he fell into a 
state of opposition and revolt against the eternal veri- 
ties and the one true medium of their communication 
to mankind. Abandoning the light of heaven which 
comes from persevering prayer, and carried away by 
his own self-sufficiency, he began to question, then to 
ignore, and, finally, to deny the Divine authority of 
the Church in which he was reared. He seemed to 
forget that the Church is the body of Christ, the in- 
dividual sacrament of unity with Christ and through 
Christ with God, and that "whosoever revolteth, ,, ac- 
cording to the dictum of the Holy Spirit, "and hath 
not the doctrine of Christ, hath not God." But he 
cared little for so solemn a pronouncement and longed 
only for emancipation from the authority of the laws 
of God and of His Church to follow his own ever 
varying caprice and fancy. 

Possessed now by the spirit of disorder and oppo- 
sition to law, and jealous of the authority of the 
Church and the God-given supremacy of her Head, he 
conceived the idea of a new religion, which he thought 
in his vanity he was capable of formulating. Forth- 
with, without the shadow of a pretense of direct and 
Divine commission, he began to construct what he 
foolishly considered a church, and, then assumed 
the right to inflict and impose his self-made work 
upon his fellow-men. In his wild scheme he aimed 
at getting rid of the Church's sacramental system and 
banishing altogether from men's minds the very idea 
of an outward and visible sign of an inward and 
invisible grace. He intended to take from men the 
only certain voice, which, speaking in the name of 
God and representing Him, delivered infallible truth 
to the world and announced authoritatively the means 
whereby sanctification and ^salvation were to be se- 
cured. He purposed, in a word, to overthrow, an- 
nihilate and displace the Mother Church, and thus 
deprive men of her Divine guidance unto truth, moral- 



140 The Facts About Luther 



ity, and life eternal. In his conceit he imagined men 
should be left wholly to their own unaided and fallible 
reason, and, hence he proclaimed the right of all with- 
out any Church interference to follow in matters of 
belief their own intellect as sole and final judge. In 
advancing this claim, so destructive to the authority 
of the Church, he asserted a right never before rec- 
ognized; a right, let it be understood, never known 
under any other form of revealed religion; a right 
never allowed even under the Jewish theocracy; and 
a right hardly ever exercised among the more en- 
lightened pagans. His program was one of the most 
daring in all human history. Though he had his mis- 
givings about the propriety and success of his sacrile- 
gious undertaking, yet he hardened his heart against 
these, and imagined that though many other ''insti- 
gators of heresies and breeders of sects" in the fifteen 
hundred years before his time failed in measuring their 
strength against the Church of Christ, he could riot 
but triumph. His attitude was bold, defiant, arrogant, 
persecuting. He would overthrow and completely de- 
stroy the Church of his fathers. But the Founder 
of this Church decreed that the powers of hell would 
not prevail against His institution, and Luther, before 
he closed his eyes in death, saw that his protest was 
unavailing and that his self-made substitute for God's 
enduring work was doomed to meet the fate of all the 
other religious innovations that scandalized preceding 
ages. 

Luther came by degrees to feel that he was some- 
thing more than Church or Pope or Councils. In his 
vanity he put himself above all the great and learned 
lights of the Church and claimed to know more than 
all the Schoolmen, Doctors and Fathers who in every 
age were noted for their clear, precise and exact ex- 
position of God's revelation. To his way of thinking 
all the great and saintly writers and defenders of the 
Church, Jerome, Chrysostom, Cyprian, Basil, Augus- 
tine, Thomas Aquinas and the rest, "fell into error" 
and 'were untrustworthy teachers ; pools out of which 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 141 

Christians had been drinking impure and loathsome 
water." In his mad ravings he called them "knaves, 
dolts, asses, and infernal blasphemers," "knowing 
very little about the Gospel, easily deceived by the 
devil, and deserving to be in hell rather than in 
heaven." The majestic unity and the calm, unchang- 
ing enunciation of truth which characterized the 
writings oi the Fathers in all the ages, displeased, 
annoyed, and angered this false prophet. He would 
have none of them or their teachings, except when 
some fellow-rebel against Divine authority was in col- 
lision with him or when he had to appeal to some 
authority beyond himself, to refute an adversary, as 
for instance, when he has to put down Zwingle. Other- 
wise he had no use for the recognized and authoritative 
exponents of the faith once delivered to the saints. 
They were in the way of the advancement of his 
nefarious scheme and their influence and testimony 
to the uniform and universal belief of mankind 
throughout the ages should be destroyed. The Fathers 
and the Doctors were against his program; they were 
one and all, "asses, rascals, beasts, Antichrists" and 
"unworthy of a hearing." He alone was right; he 
knew more than all of them put together; and, as they 
"were authors of impious things, empty declaimers, of 
no weight whatever, theological abortions, fountains of 
error," he thought he was called by heaven to speak 
out and tell mankind it needed a new church, that 
the old one was alien to the world and must be de- 
stroyed, and that he, the "doctor of doctors," as he 
called himself, alone had the "doctrines from Heaven" 
which all henceforward must receive from his mouth 
lest they "be everlastingly condemned." 

Luther now claimed more authority than any Pope 
ever did. In his heart he knew that the work he was 
undertaking was unwarranted, unjustifiable and out- 
rageously sacrilegious. But the spirit of rebellion 
against constituted authority, especially in the ecclesi- 
astical order, took possession of him and nothing now 
would stop him from sounding the trumpet of battle 



142 The Facts About Luther 



against the ancient Church, her teaching and her dis- 
cipline. To escape the shame of his atrocity, he, as 
deceptive as he was subtle, began his work of destruc- 
tion by mingling with the crowds to win disciples, who 
were only too glad to "take revenge on Christianity for 
having so long interrupted the pleasures of the 
world." To these he preached rebellion and awoke 
that chord which responded in the heart of Eve to 
the tempter's first whisper: "Why hath God com- 
manded you ?" Directing his shafts against the force 
of law, to give zest to his harangues, he spoke not 
"those things that are right/' as Scripture enjoins, 
but, "pleasant things," "errors" such as the populace 
who long to be deceived glory in, and hence, knowing 
the open road to an assured popularity and fame, he 
talked loudly and boisterously of the misdeeds, more 
or less real, of some of the members of the Church 
and of certain abuses which actually had crept into 
the Church. 

Thi<s was a very clever and cunning way to inflame 
the passions of the lawless and the wicked, and to 
divert attention from his own heretical teachings and 
notoriously scandalous behavior. During all this 
time he was seemingly unconscious of his own faults, 
which sadly needed reformation and removal. He, 
was, however, wide-awake and ever on the lookout for 
the shortcomings and the defects of the brethren in 
the household of the faith in order to use these as 
a weapon against the Church and thus unfairly place 
responsibility where it did not belong. He seemed 
to take a special delight in keeping his nose fixed at 
the leak in the sewer and then rudely exposing the 
evils discovered in the lives of some whose personal 
conduct in certain directions was in conflict with the 
lofty and elevated teachings they professed. The 
illustrious deeds and the holy lives of the millions 
that were true to their holy calling were for the 
moment conveniently forgotten and the corruption of 
the few that followed the misuse of wealth and 
power he emphasized and magnified for the outcry of 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 143 

men who themselves were anything but "reformed 
in the newness of their mind." The shortcomings 
of some, no doubt, presented then as now grievous 
stumbling blocks and tended to disedif y. The Founder 
of the Church predicted that scandals would arise, 
but at the same time He was careful to warn all 
against using these as a motive for disloyalty and a 
basis for disobedience to legitimate authority. We 
do not wish to deny that some of tfie brethren, 
Luther himself for instance, were not always careful 
to exemplify in their lives the salutary morality which 
the Church ever and constantly preached to her mem- 
bers. It should be remembered, however, that what- 
ever self-indulgence, pride, ambition, and political 
profligacy existed now and then, were all traceable 
to a disregard of the Church's teachings and were com- 
mitted in violation of her disciplinary regulations. The 
Church, therefore, could not rightly be held respon- 
sible for the misdeeds of her unfaithful children. 
Whatever -abuses existed always sprang from the 
personal and not the official side of the Church; 
they were not inherent in the Church; and did not 
originate in her essential constitution, nor grow out 
of it. It is only gross ignorance or malignity that 
attempts to make the Church responsible for the mis- 
deeds and indiscretions of her unfaithful and de- 
generate members. . It is remarkable, however, that 
in all matters of doctrine and morals not one among 
the unfaithful of all times ever directly or remotely 
set himself at variance, as Luther did, with the teach- 
ings and practices of historical Christianity. No bad 
Catholic before his day attempted to set up so false a 
Christianity ; none ever so tampered with the original 
deposit of the true faith; none ever dared assail the 
organization which God had established, and which He 
commanded all to obey and respect if they desired 
eternal life. 

When Luther discovered that he could not frighten 
the Head of the Church, intimidate legitimate author- 
ity, and impose his special brand of reform, which 



144 



The Facts About Luther 



was no reform at all, he was greatly disappointed and 
disturbed. Chagrined and wounded in his vanity, he 

.grew litigious, vengeful and abusive. He had every 
opportunity in his chosen field, had he so willed, to 
seek out and minister to the lost and wandering sheep. 
Like many saintly souls in every age, he might by 
preaching, prayer and example have helped towards 
that reformation of abuses which the Church is ever 
attempting by canons of discipline, papal, provin- 
cial, diocesan, but this ministry of zeal and salva- 
tion, within the Church and not out of it, was not to 
his liking. What he wished was not the restoration 
of the lost and the reformation of the imperfect whose 
abuses he criticised, but the destruction of the sheep- 
fold established by the One Great Shepherd of souls 
and the overthrow of His successor's supreme author- 
ity. Little aware of his folly and carried away by 
an uncontrollable anger, he set to work not only to 
divide but to destroy the Kingdom of Christ and wreck 
the .Bark of Peter. 

The special weapons he used in his opposition 
against the mystical Body of Christ and its represen- 
tative on earth, were calumny, abuse and misrepre- 
sentation. Though the Church has the right to have 
said of her nothing but what is true, yet Luther, in 

. order to advance his nefarious scheme, twisted and 
altered and changed her well-known doctrines, which 

.had remained intact and uncorrupted for centuries, to 
deceive the unwary masses unable to discern the 
malignant poison of heresy. Arrogating to himself 
more authority than any Pope ever did, he falsely 
alleged, that "the Church founded by 'Jesus Christ 
was corrupt in its very constitution; that from the 
temple of God it had become a synagogue of Satan; 
that its visible head, the Pope, was Antichrist and 
that the Papacy must be destroyed." He contended 
in a pamphlet that the Papacy "is an institution of 
the Devil;" and he abused all Popes, Bishops, 
Priests, Monks, and Catholics in general, in the 

coarsest and most brutal manner. Possessed of a 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 145 

satanical hatred of all authority, save what he claimed 
for himself, he imagined that the Church was all 
wrong and should be cast aside as a human inven- 
tion, despite the fact that her Founder was Jesus 
Christ, who promised the assistance of the Holy Ghost 
to protect her from error and who declared He would 
preserve her to the end of time to spread the glad 
tidings of redemption. Disregarding the magnificent 
unity of faith which reigned during centuries before 
his day, the result not of ignorance or indifference, 
but of enlightened science and spiritual earnestness 
due to the powerful teachings of the missionaries and 
the profound expositions of the Scholastic theologians, 
he, in his brazen conceit, thought the time had come 
"to deliver Europe from the yoke of the Popes and 
the superstitions of an idolatrous worship." What he 
thought was needed in his. day were his ways of ex- 
plaining the truths and maxims of the Gospel, and his 
new doctrines, entirely different from and opposed to 
those which were taught and had been taught through- 
out historical Christianity. Thus his avowed object 
was to displace the Church founded for all time by 
Jesus Christ, and, in her stead rear up a new Chris- 
tianity, form a new Scripture, prescribe a new faith 
and establish a new worship, something never dreamt 
of or recognized before his day. "The Bible," he 
allegedy "furnished the necessary instruction and 
authority for such an undertaking," and forthwith he 
declared that it and it alone, left to the caprice of 
individuals and interpreted without the traditional 
teaching of a Church Divinely empowered to safe- 
guard and explain it, was the sole and ultimate 
criterion of the Christian's faith. "The Bible and 
nothing but the Bible" became the familiar Prot- 
estant formula, which, as history tells, wherever it 
was followed out in practice, invariably resulted in 
confusion and produced as many religions as think- 
ers or" semi-thinkers or no thinkers at all. An open 
Bible cannot render and never will render man's private 
judgment infallible. Freedom of interpretation means 



146 The Facts About Luther 



the destruction of all sure doctrine, the death- 
blow to truth handed down, the tearing asunder of 
religious union and the beginning of endless dissen- 
sions. 

The life work Luther now proposed to himself had 
for its object the ignoble purpose of destroying the 
Church, disrupting the solidarity of united Christian 
belief, and leaving men without a safe guide as to the 
verities which the Almighty wished His subjects to 
know and the worship He required. The reformer's 
genius, if we may dignify his spirit of destruction by 
that name, ended here. The Church, which in her 
appointment is as divine as the creation of the visible 
firmament of the heavens, he would not have; and 
yet to replace it or offer a worthy substitute, even 
were this possible, he of all men was manifestly in- 
competent. Ever vacillating, ambiguous, contradict- 
ory, he was utterly incapable of formulating a clear,, 
well-defined, unhesitating system of belief to replace 
that of the old Divinely established Church. It was 
a special characteristic of him, as every student of his. 
life knows, to deny one day what he professed the day 
before. At one moment he would declare the Church 
infallible, and, the next he would say it is fallible. He 
urged that all should submit to the Councils of the 
Church, and then that they must not. He maintained 
that the civil government had power over the min- 
isters of religion, and then denied it. He admitted 
that there was a hell, and afterwards questioned its. 
existence. He taught that the sacraments conferred 
grace, and advocated the contrary. He claimed that 
there were seven sacraments and then reduced them 
to two, increased them to three, and finally to five. He 
maintained each of the sacraments and denied five of 
them. In baptism he both admitted and denied that 
grace was conferred; and taught that original sin was 
effaced and that it was not. He maintained that there 
was a purgatory, and that we should pray for the. 
dead, and then denied it. 

These are only a few specimens of Luther's con- 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 



147 



stant variation in teaching. They show how uncertain 
his attitude was regarding religious truth, and, there- 
fore how unfitted he was for the delicate task of 
framing a new profession of faith which could in 
any sense be presented and maintained before an ex- 
acting and intelligent world. His associates in rebel- 
lion recognized this uncertainty and often called at- 
tention to4iis lack of solid foundation in religious ex- 
position. Cochlaeus says : 'The seven-headed Luther 
everywhere contradicts himself and his own teaching." 
It is, moreover, a matter of history that when the 
meeting of the Diet at Augsburg made it necessary 
for the Protestant party to state distinctly its faith, 
Luther sinks to a secondary place. All knew that he 
was as unstable as water and could not be trusted to 
adhere to any pronouncement for the brief space of 
twenty-four hours. The Augsburg Confession, which 
is to this day the creed of the Lutherans, and printed 
in the beginning of some of their prayer books, is not 
the work of Luther. It was drawn up by Melanch- 
thon, who corresponded with Luther, then at Coburg, 
but did not adhere to his views. 

Fair-minded Protestant authors nave all along ad- 
mitted the woeful vagueness, inconsistency and per- 
petual contradictions everywhere noticeable in their 
hero's pronouncements on religious questions, but, 
strange to say, many of them do not consider his 
irreconcileable differences in dealing with eternal truth 
as real defects. They very cleverly but deceitfully 
evade the real issue by endeavoring to make their 
readers believe that his aberrations in doctrinal mat- 
ters only show forth their formulator's wonderful 
intellectual versatility, vigor, and wealth. These writers 
have eyes and see not that the contradictions so 
noticeable in their master's pronouncements on all 
matters religious unfit him to be in any sense a reliable 
exponent of Eternal Law and that his wild and reck- 
less inconsistency in presenting his new-fangled ideas, 
opposed entirely to all Divine ordinances, disqualify 
him as a religious teacher and a spiritual guide to 



3 



148 The Facts About Luther 



whom any one could with safety entrust the care of 
his salvation. If the minds of such writers are not 
warped by prejudice they should realize that when 
Luther set himself up as a religious leader and claimed 
a divine mission to teach truth, he should at least 
have been clear-headed enough to give his hearers an 
exact, definite, and consistent answer to any and ail 
the vital problems affecting the interests of men's 
souls. This Luther did not and could not do. He 
never knew for a moment what he was' going to 
teach next. He despised the Church with her deter- 
mined, fixed and unalterable declaration of truth, and, 
thus, like unto "the heathen and the publican/' his per- 
ception of divine truth became obscured, leaving him 
and all who were ever led by him, like "children," as 
St. Paul says, "tossed to and fro with every wind of 
doctrine." Eph. IV, 14. His "wickedness," to use 
the word of St. Paul at the end of the text just quoted 
to describe the promoters of f alse doctrine, taught men 
to "dissolve Jesus," deny the teachings of His Gos- 
pel and impose an impious travesty of Christianity 
that preaches "Peace; and there is no peace." Look 
out on the Christian world to-day with its hundred 
and more warring denominations, and behold how few 
of the original articles of faith have survived among 
the disciples and followers of Luther. 

Luther's advocates might, if their eyes are not 
filmed, read with profit the following words which 
their master penned when he had genuine misgivings 
at the outset of his apostasy. "How many times," he 
writes, "have I not asked myself with bitterness the 
same question which the Papists put me; Art thou 
alone wise? Darest thou imagine that all mankind 
have been in error for so long a series of years? I 
am not so bold as to assert that I have been guided 
in this affair by God. How will it be, if, after all, 
it is thou thyself who art wrong and art thou in- 
volving in thy error so many souls who will then be 
eternally damned?" Some time after he wrote these 
words and reflected that "it is a terrible thing and 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 149 

full of danger to lift one's voice in the Church of 
God," he felt that he "could heartily wish to bury all 
in silence and pass a sponge over what he had writ- 
ten," knowing that he would "have to render an ac- 
count to God for every heedless word." Compunction 
came too late. In spite of all his regrets he never 
had the courage to take in hand "the sponge" he 
spoke of to wipe out the slanderous scribblings and 
wanton perversions of truth he penned against the 
Church of God and her infallible Head. He went 
into eternity without a sign of repentance, and died 
as he had lived, blaspheming the Church which he 
had misrepresented and abused, but which he could 
not either overthrow or destroy. His end was sad 
beyond expression. Would it not be well whilst there 
is time, for all, who like him, revile, hate, and mis- 
represent the Church and her doctrinal virtues and 
ethics, to carefully ponder over their master's mis- 
take? The monomania of opposing the Church of 
Christ and decrying her authority over the souls of 
men is a disease that all afflicted therewith should 
rid themselves at once for it entails ruin for time 
and eternity. 

Luther openly and unblushingly maintained that the 
Church founded by Jesus Christ had fallen into error 
in her teachings and that her doctrines needed change. 
This outrageous calumny has been assiduously cir- 
culated time and time again since its formulator first 
gave it to the world and thousands upon thousands 
have been only too ready to believe it, notwithstand- 
ing its falseness, untenableness and, what is worse, 
its blasphemy against Christ and His Church. The 
noisy talk of degenerate demagogues who make an 
easy livelihood by spreading discontent among audi- 
ences that are only too ready to listen to everything 
defamatory of the Church cannot, however, silence 
truth or prevent the fair-minded and intelligent in 
the community from searching for it as it is in Christ 
Jesus and His Church. 

On a little reflection, it will appear plain to the 



150 The Facts About Luther 



unbiased mind that what Luther declared concerning 
the Church could not be substantiated for the very 
good and solid reason that, "if," as Preston, a dis- 
tinguished convert from Episcopalianism, says, "the 
Church had erred in her teaching of the articles of 
faith confided to her by her Divine Founder, then there 
never had been a Church, or if there had been a 
Church, it had not been the Church of Christ. The 
Church of Christ, if it be the Church of Christ, can- 
not err in matters of faith and morals, for the moment 
it errs, it is no longer the Church of Christ, but the 
Church of the devij. What can there be more plain 
than this? That cannot be called the Church of 
Christ which teaches error; but if the Church of 
Christ can teach error, then according to the assump- 
tion, it is the Church of Christ and it is not the 
Church of Christ at one and the same time. It "is 
the Church of Christ because, according to the assump- 
tion of the moment, it is so called; it is not the 
Church of Christ, because it teaches falsehood, and 
cannot, therefore, be the agent of God in any sense. « 
The very idea of a Church having erred in faith de- 
stroys it root and branch, and leaves nothing what- 
ever behind it. Again, this theory is open to another 
consideration. If the Church erred, then Christ broke 
His word, for He declared that it should not err, and 
he said to Peter on whom He built His Church : The 
gates of hell shall never prevail against my Church/ 
and I will guide it into all truth.' Now, if the 
Church erred, the gates of hell did prevail against 
the Church and Christ did not keep His promise. 
But you are to have a new Church and Christ is to 
be its author. But Christ has broken His word, ac- 
cording to the assumption of Luther and his follow- 
ers and, therefore, is not worthy of confidence. Then 
how can you trust Him again? And yet you are to 
believe, in one and the same mental act, that Christ 
broke His word and is not worthy of confidence and 
that He is worthy of confidence and accept a new 
Christianity at His hands. Every logical mind will 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 151 

easily grasp the utter inconsistency of such theories 
as these." 

Whatever may be said, it is evident that the idea 
of the error of the Church in matters of faith and 
morals is suicidal to the Church itself. "The Church 
of God," says St. Paul, "is the pillar and the ground 
of truth." It holds up the truth to the nations and 
on it the truth rests. Now break it down and where 
is the pillar and the ground of truth? So when 
Luther taught that the Church had lapsed into error 
and when his imitators continue his wicked work by 
constructing religious organizations which they know 
to be human and not Divine, the work of man and 
not of God, each and all contribute their share in 
the work of crippling, dividing and destroying the 
Church Jesus Christ established as the organ of His 
truth for all time, and, then, be it remembered, when 
this Church passes away from the minds of men, 
then will be obliterated the great bulwark of truth, 
piety, and devotion. Eminent Protestants all along 
have admitted the influence of the Church on the 
nations' morality and civilization. "Withdraw that in- 
fluence," the Rev. Dr. Boynton, a Congregational 
minister of Brooklyn, N. Y., says, "and there would 
be Bedlam within a month." 

The Catholic Church has always claimed Christ 
for her Founder and has proved her Divine mission 
and her unchangeable teaching to the world. Eminent 
non-Catholic divines acknowledge this. From a vast 
number we select the late Dr. Briggs, a Protestant 
Episcopalian theologian of New York, who under- 
took to answer the question, 'Who or what is a 
Catholic* in the American Journal of ^Theology, a 
periodical connected with the Chicago University. 
"There can be no doubt," he writes, "that at the 
close of the third century 'Roman' and 'Catholic' were 
so closely allied that they were practically identical. 
In other words, connection or communion with the 
See of Rome was then, as now, a test and condition 
of one's Catholicity." Dr. Briggs further maintained 



152 



The Facts About Luther 



"that the Roman Catholic Church of our day is the 
heir by unbroken descent of the Catholic Church oL 
the second century/' In his reading of early Chris- 
tian literature he found the word "Catholic," to stand 
for three things: (i) The vital unity of the Church 
of Christ; (2) the geographical unity of the Church 
extending throughout the world; (3) the historical 
unity of the Church in apostolic tradition. 

Applying these tests to modern conditions, Dr. 
Briggs finds: "Geographical unity has been lost by 
the Protestant Churches, by the Church of England 
more than any other, for the Church of England is 
so strictly a national church that she is confined to the 
Anglo-Saxon race. She has not only no communion 
with the Roman Church, but she has also no com- 
munion with the sister national churches. . . .If we 
(the Episcopalians) would be Catholic, we cannot 
become Catholic by merely calling ourselves by that 
name. Unless the name corresponds with the thing, 
it is a sham and a shame." 

The Catholic Church, then, has been well nigh two 
thousand years in this world of change, and at no 
age of her eventful history has her teaching been 
at variance with that of her Divine Founder. No 
reliable historian notes that after the death of the 
last of the Apostles a single change or increase ever 
took place in the revelation or deposit of faith con- 
fided to the Church's keeping. Men, like Luther, 
accuse the Church of variation and, some like Toc- 
hackert, go as far as to say that she manufactured new 
dogmas, for instance, the Immaculate Conception of 
the Virgin Mary and the Infallibility of the Pope. 
Needless to say all and every accusation of this nature 
is without the slightest foundation. To charge the 
Church with the manufacture of new dogmas is merely 
a scheme invented by designing men to deceive the 
unwary and prevent them from searching after the 
truth. The idea is rooted in misconception, bigotry, 
and prejudice. 

The Church does not tolerate and never has in all 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 153 

the ages of her existence tolerated novelty or new- 
ness of doctrine. She very wisely admits a progress, 
an amplification, and a development of her teaching 
for the fuller and better understanding and compre- 
hension of Divine truth. What has been announced 
from the beginning she cannot change and never has 
changed; what she has done and may do at some 
future time, was, under the strain of controversy, 
the attacks of heresy or other causes, to increase 
the knowledge of the people regarding the fixed doc- 
trines of Christ and bring out in clearer light and 
minuter detail the belief contained in the original 
deposit of faith handed down from Apostolic times. 
Dr. Mausbach, in the "Germania" of June 12, 1902, 
very pertinently observes: "As the germs of truth 
that lay dormant in the bosom of the early Church 
were, like the grain of mustard-seed, to expand later 
on to the fullness of their life and growth, so it has 
come to pass that the simple and germinal elements 
of Divine truth that appeared in the teachings of the 
apostles have, at a later stage of the development of 
God's kingdom, been more fully differentiated and 
more definitely related." 

The Church has never assumed the right to for- 
mulate new teachings, manufacture new dogmas and 
impose new doctrines. She has, however, the right 
to define Divine tru f h, to amplify it, and give it new 
and fuller explanation as necessity may demand. This 
right she exercises when she makes an infallible decla- 
ration concerning a dogma which is already a part 
of the original deposit of belief. These definitions 
of belief are not to be construed into other than 
formal and explicit declarations of the faith she 
held from the beginning. A new form of creed to 
safeguard her teaching can never with her imply a 
new doctrine. Progress in the understanding of the 
faith is her motto, but change never. This view 
has been altogether ignored by those who are anxious 
to charge the Church with making a change in her 
teaching, but all scholars worthy of the name are 



154 



The Facts About Luther 



agreed that she has been all along and is to-day in 
all doctrinal pronouncements exactly in accord with 
the truth which Christ commissioned her to deliver 
to the world. Heresy and schism there have been, 
but a mighty defender has at all times come forward 
to crush the head of error, and the Church has gone 
steadily on wkh her God-given mission to teach all 
things whatsoever Christ entrusted to her keeping. 
Surely there can be none so illogical as to deny the 
force of tradition. Yet tradition compels the admis- 
sion of the Church's Apostolic doctrine. This doc- 
trine came by the blood and the sacrifices of millions 
of martyrs to Luther's day, and it has remained intact 
and unchanged ever since to enlighten the minds and 
comfort the souls of men. 

Bougaud in his remarkable work, "II Cristianismo, 
etc.," pays the following tribute to the unchangeable 
character of the Church's teaching as embodied and 
epitomized in the Apostles' Creed. 'Tor eighteen 
centuries," he says, "it has subsisted, not hidden away 
in some secret part of a temple, not rolled up in a 
bundle like a mummy, but thrown on the highways 
of humanity, sung in churches, repeated eivery day on 
the lips and in the hearts of millions and millions of 
mankind. And not only does it subsist to the shame 
of all things else, which are fading and unstable, but 
for eighteen centuries it has had to bear the brunt 
of the most formidable intellectual warfare ever seen. 
It had its beginning on the eve of Pentecost, and it 
has not yet ceased. And as the sword of the spirit 
is the most beautiful to be found in the world, who 
can tell the number and variety of attacks made against 
it by its enemies. Now it is in close quarters with 
the subtleties of Greek genius, as in the days of Arius, 
Nestorius, and Eutyches ; now it meets the impetuous 
eloquence of a time both trivial and sublime, as in 
the epoch of Luther ; again in this privileged country 
of the globe (France), where raillery kills with pier- 
cing witticisms, as in the period of Voltaire, or even 
in our days of scientific delirium, with the astonish- 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 155 

ing discoveries of science not rightly understood. 
Behold, for eighteen centuries this has continued; 
eighteen centuries of the most terrible intellectual 
warfare, maintained by the most choice intelligences. 
Now, what has been the effect of it? Has a single 
line of the symbol been cancelled? No, the Creed 
subsists, unchanged, in its splendid integrity. It is 
like one of those beautiful obelisks of red granite 
brought from Egypt to the piazzas of Rome: the 
storms of four thousand years have not been able to 
break a fragment off them." 

It is an incontrovertible fact that there is sham, 
individualistic religion unfortunately prevailing widely 
to-day. It had its origin in the rebellious heart of 
Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation. There 
and then originated the great gulf that divided the 
ideals, principles and ethics of the religion of the gentle 
Nazarene from the individualistic system which revived 
and re-established the selfish characteristics of Pagan- 
ism and which is falsely called by the name of Chris- 
tianity to-day. Without right or sanction, Protestant- 
ism has promulgated doctrines unknown and unheard- 
of for sixteen centuries after Christ established His 
Church. No wonder that many Protestant ministers 
to-day complain of the inconsistency of the religion 
that they avow. They realize that the terrible break 
of the Reformation opened up an enormous chasm 
which divides their belief from that which Jesus taught 
and gave His Church to communicate to the world. 
It could not be otherwise, for rebellion in matters 
spiritual, as often in things material, enervates, dis- 
rupts, and destroys. Outside the Church to-day Pro- 
testant Biblical scholars have gone almost completely 
and hopelessly away from the traditional Christ, true 
God and true man. Dr. Loofs, a non-Catholic Profes- 
sor of Oberlin College, Ohio, considers that the Ger- 
man Lutheran scholars are past the day of battle for 
the Divinity of Christ, for among many the belief in 
the very Godhead and very Manhood of Jesus Christ 
has been practically given up. By the denial of the 



156 



The Facts About Luther 



Divinity of Christ, they strike at the foundation doc- 
trine of the Christian religion, and then the whole 
fabric of revelation falls to pieces. The denial of the 
Divinity of Christ involves the denial of the Divinity 
of His Church, and in consequence men are left with- 
out a Divine, infallible teacher to speak in God's name 
and with His authority. 

If men who long for the true religion of Christ 
will only throw oft the veil of human respect, acknowl- 
edge their error, and humbly accept what Luther re- 
jected, they will have no further necessity to seek for 
what they want, for the Church, One, Holy, Catholic, 
and Apostolic, remains to-day to speak to all in the 
name and by the authority of her Divine Founder, 
and shall remain through all future ages, as she was 
from the beginning, the sure fountain and arc of 
salvation, upholding by a word and work the heavenly 
sanctions of law, divine, international, social. 

This Church is gradually becoming better known 
and fair-minded men are coming in numbers to her 
defence. One of these is the Rev. T. B. Thompson of 
the Plymouth Congregational Church, Chicago. In a 
recent sermon he said : "It must be admitted in all 
fairness that popular ignorance, superficial knowledge, 
and malicious slander have in many instances misrep- 
resented the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church'. 
To contemplate her history is to admire her. Reforma- 
tion, wars, empires and kingdoms have been arrayed 
against her. After all these centuries she stands so 
strong and so firmly rooted in the lives of millions 
that she commands our highest respect. As an illus- 
tration, she is the most splendid the world has ever 
seen. Governments have arisen and gone to the grave 
of the nations since her advent. Peoples of every 
tongue have worshipped at her altars v The Roman 
Catholic Church has stood solid for law and order. 
Her police power in controlling millions untouched by 
denominations has been great. When she speaks, legis- 
lators, statesmen, politicians and governments stop to 
listen, often to obey. In the realm of worship, her 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 157 

ministry has been of the highest. In employing beads, 
statues, pictures, and music she has made a wise and 
intelligent use of symbolism. Her use of the best in 
music and painting has been the greatest single inspira- 
tion to those arts, and her cathedrals are the shrines of 
all pilgrims. ,, 

Brother Thompson never uttered truer words than 
thdse. May the light spread till the minds of all 
will be illuminated with the glory and splendor of 
the truth as it is in Christ and in His Church ! 

Luther entertained not only a special hatred of the 
Church, but also a life-long spirit of antagonism 
towards its Supreme Head, the Pope. With him it 
mattered not that the Bible defined God's Church as 
"the pillar and the ground of truth" ; he declared 
it in his letter to Leo X. to "be the jaws of Hell, 
kept wide open by the anger of God." His opposi- 
tion toward the Head of the Church was equally 
pronounced. He knew that the Bible names Cephas 
the "rock" and bids him "confirm the brethren," yet 
he dares in his "Comment on Galatians V, 20," to des- 
ignate the Pope as "the general heresiarch and the 
head of all heresies." Thus to this erratic man, noth- 
ing was good or acceptable that came out of Naza- 
reth. When the Holy See and its Supreme Ruler 
rose up before his mind, as they did constantly, he 
was aroused to frenzy and it seemed as if "his heart 
was changed from man's." In denying the position 
and authority of the Successor of St. Peter, his lan- 
guage was always characteristically vulgar, abusive, 
and insulting. For one who claimed that "his mouth 
was the mouth of Jesus Christ," we are astonished at 
the vocabulary of insult and rancorous hate he con- 
stantly launched against the Successor of St. Peter. 
His maniacal ravings, which brushed aside the plain 
fact that the Holy See from the Apostles' days to his 
own had been recognized by the whole body of the 
faithful as the Divinely constituted centre of unity 
and truth, were especially marked in his work "The 
Papacy, an institution of the Devil" in which, "putting 



158 



The Facts About Luther 



on cursing like a garment/' as the Psalmist says, he 
did his utmost to malign and insult Catholics, and to 
abuse and deride their spiritual chief. Luther lived 
under the reign of four successive popes, and he knew 
as well as any man of his day that not one of these 
or any of their predecessors ever tampered with the 
faith of Jesus Christ and did not deserve to be desig- 
nated as "heresiarchs." Moreover, to call the Vica^ of 
Christ by the name of "Heresiarch," was to incur the 
woe pronounced against those who "put darkness 
for light and light for darkness." Is. V, 20. But 
we need not wonder at his attitude. No one becomes 
a greater enemy to God's Church than he who has 
left it; none reviles the amplitude of jurisdiction 
emanating from God Himself and embodied in the 
Governor of all the Faithful, more than he who has 
fallen from it. "Corruptio optimi pessima." In Luther 
we have a flagrant example of St. Gregory's terrible 
saying about bad priests, that there "are no men from 
whom our Lord receives greater injury." 

The Reformer's abuse of the Head of the Church 
reaches its height in this frightful book published in 
Wittenberg, 1545. The text was illustrated by his 
friend, the famous painter Lucas Cranach, who, after 
the author's suggestions, filled it with a number of 
woodcuts which in obscenity and vulgarity have never 
been surpassed. The purpose of this nasty work was 
to ridicule and defame the Papal office in the eyes 
of the lower classes. The following description of 
what Luther thought of "the Pope and his devil's 
kingdom" is furnished by Grisar and shows to what 
extremes the Reformer went to ensure the success of 
his work of destruction with the unthinking and vulgar 
rabble. 

"The picture with the Furies to which Luther refers 
is that which represents the 'birth and origin of the 
Pope,' as the Latin superscription describes it. Here 
is depicted, in a peculiarly revolting way, what Luther 
says in his 'Wider das Bapstum vom Teuffel gestifft/ 
viz., the Pope's being born from the 'devil's behind/ 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 159 

The devil-mother is portrayed as a hideous woman 
with a tail, from under which Pope and Cardinals are 
emerging head foremost. Of the Furies one is suck- 
ling, another carrying and the third rocking the cradle 
of the Papal infant, Whom the draughtsman every- 
where depicts wearing the tiara. These are the Furies 
Megaera, Alecto, and Tisiphone/ 

"Another picture shows the 'Worship of the Pope 
as God of ~the World/ This, too, expresses a thought 
contained in the 'Wider das Bapstum/ w 7 here Luther 
says: 'We may also with a safe conscience take to 
the closet his coat of arms with the Papal keys and 
his crown, and use them for the relief of nature/ 
As a matter of fact in this picture we see on a stool 
decorated with the papal insignia a crown or tiara set 
upside down on which a man-at-arms is seated in 
the action of easing himself ; a second, with his 
breeches undone, prepares to do the same, while a 
third who has already done so is adjusting his dress.'' 

"The picture with the title The Pope gives a Coun- 
cil in Germany' shows the Pope in his tira riding on 
a sow and digging his spurs into her sides. The sow 
is Germany which is obliged to submit to such igno- 
minious treatment from the Papists ; as for the Council 
which the Pope is giving to the German people it is 
depicted as his own, the Pope's, excrement, which he 
holds in his hand pledging the Germans in it, as Luther 
says in the passage quoted above. The Pope blesses 
the steaming object while the sow noses it with her 
snout. Underneath stands the ribald verse: 

'Sow, I want to have a ride, 
Spur you well on either side. 
Did you say 'Concilium'? 
Take instead my 'merdrum/ 

'Here the Pope's feet are kissed/ are the words 
over another picture, and, from the Pope who is 
seated on his throne with the Bull of Excommunica- 
tion in his hand, two men are seen running away, 



160 The Facts About Luther 



showing him, as Kostlin says, 'their tongues and hinder 

{>arts with the utmost indecency/ The inscription be- 
ow runs: 

'Pope, don't scare us so with your ban ; 
Please don't be so angry a man; 
Or else we shall take good care 
To show you the 'Belvedere.' 

"Kostlin's description must be supplemented by add- 
ing that the two men, whose faces and bared pos- 
teriors are turned towards the Pope, are depicted as 
emitting wind in "his direction in the shape of puffs 
of smoke; from the Pope's Bull fire, flames and stones 
are bursting forth." 

"Of the remaining woodcuts one reproduces the 
scene which formed the title-page to the first edition 
of the "Wider das Bapstum," viz., the gaping jaws of 
hell, between the teeth of which is seen the Pope sur- 
rounded by a cohort of devils, some of whom are 
crowning him with the tiara; another portrays the 
famous Pope-Ass, said to have been cast up by the 
Tiber near Rome; it shows "what God Himself thinks 
of Popery," yet another depicts a pet idea of Luther's 
viz., the "regard of the 'Papa satanissimus' and his 
cardinals," i.e., their being hanged, while their tongues, 
which had been torn out by the root, are nailed fast 
to the gallows. "How the Pope teaches faith and 
theology" ; here the Pope is shown as a robed donkey 
sitting upright on a throne and playing the bagpipes 
with the help of his hoofs. "How the Pope thanks 
the Emperors for their boundless favors" introduces 
a scene where Clement IV. with his own hand strikes 
off the head of Conradin. "How the Pope, following 
Peter's example, honors the King" is the title of a 
woodcut where a Pope (probably Alexander III.) sets 
his foot on the neck of the Emperor (Frederick Bar- 
barossa at Venice). It is not necessary to waste 
words on the notorious falsehoods embodied in the 
last two pictures. Luther, moreover, further embel- 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 161 

lished the accounts he found, for not even the bit- 
terest antagonist of the Papacy had ever dared to 
accuse Clement IV. of having slain with his own 
hand the last of the Staufens. Among the ignorant 
masses to whom these pictures and verses were in- 
tended to appeal, there were, nevertheless, many who 
were prepared to accept such tales as true on the 
word of one known as the "man of God," the "Evan- 
gelist, the new Elias and the Prophet of Germany/' 
"In the "Historien des ehrwirdigen in Gott seligen 
thewren Mannes Gottes," Mathesius says of Luther: 
"In the year 1545 he brought out the mighty, earnest 
book against the Papacy founded by the devil and 
maintained and bolstered up by lying signs; and, in 
the same year, also caused many scathing pictures to 
be struck off in which he portrayed for the benefit 
of those unable to read, the true nature and monstros- 
ity of Antichrist, just as the Spirit of God in the 
Apocalypse of St. John depicted the red bride of 
Babylon, or as Master John Huss summed up his 
teaching in pictures for the people of the Lord Christ 
and of Antichrist." "The Holy Ghost is well able 
to be severe and cutting," says Mathesius of this 
book and the caricatures. "God is a jealous God and 
a burning fire, and those who are driven and in- 
flamed by His Spirit to wage a ghostly warfare 
against the foes of God show themselves worthy foe- 
men of those who withstand their Lord and Saviour." 
Mathesius, like many others, was full of admiration 
for the work." (Grisar. Vol. V., pp., 423, 4. 5.) 

Thus the first biographer of Luther shows his taste 
^for the filthy and disgusting in his appreciation of one 
of the vilest and nastiest books that ever disgraced 
the pen of the Ecclesiastes of Wittenburg or of any 
other man before or since. Unlike Mathesius, decent 
men would consider it a less odious task to wade 
through sewage than go through the pages of this 
horrible book and its indecent engravings. It is with 
the greatest reluctance we refer to such an astound- 
ing production, but no account of Luther would be 



162 



The Facts About Luther 



complete without reference to this book, which should 
never have been printed, for its filthy language and 
indecent illustrartions show its author to have been 
anything but a "dear man of God," as his friends love 
to call him. Dollinger when speaking of this book 
said "It must have been written under the influence 
of intoxicating drink, or of fury of mind bordering on 
madness." This celebrated writer had good grounds 
for the criticism he makes, for Hospinian, one of the 
contemporary reformers, declared Luther to be "abso- 
lutely mad"; and men like Agricola and Catharinus, 
who knew the reformer, openly referred to his well 
known drinking habits, which at times approached 
intemperance, if not actual drunkenness. 

In spite of all that Luther said and wrote against 
the Papacy, it is well to remember that nineteen hun- 
dred years ago and more, Jesus Christ, as foretold by 
the Prophets, was pleased to appear in this world 
to uplift, enlighten and save mankind. In the Divine 
plan of redemption, He, who was full of grace, life 
and power, was not to remain here below forever 
and continue in person the instruction and guidance 
of mankind in the way of eternal life. He is no longer 
visible on earth, but before He returned whence He 
came, He was mindful to organize, found and endow 
with perpetuity an hierarchical Church, which He 
made the depository of His teachings and which He 
empowered to instruct, govern, and act in His name. 
This Church was to witness for Him until the con- 
summation of the world and her mission was to bring 
His doctrine, His worship, and His ministry down 
through the ages to all peoples and to all nations. In 
this system of Divinely guaranteed authority, which " 
Christ established, the Master mercifully provided a 
safe asylum for the perpetuity, preservation and protec- 
tion of His Divine, saving, and ennobling teachings. 
Before ascending into heaven Christ was pleased to 
appoint a head over His Society and to be Vicariously 
represented on earth in the person of the Sovereign 
Pontiff, in whom the Church recognizes the most ex- 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 163 

alted degree of dignity, the full amplitude of juris- 
diction, and a power based on no human constitu- 
tions however venerable, but emanating from the 
Saviour Himself. As the true and legitimate Vicar 
of Jesus Christ, the Pope presides over the Universal 
Church. He is the Father and Governor in mat- 
ters spiritual of all the Faithful, of bishops and of 
all prelates, be their station, rank or power what they 
may. As the Church is never to perish, the rock on 
which it is built is never to perish and that rock is the 
Papal Spiritual Sovereignty. As the son of a king 
inherits the rights of his father, so each successor 
in the lineage of the spiritual children of Peter re- 
ceives from Jesus Christ that high sovereignty and 
jurisdiction needed to rule and guide the Church for 
all time. "To thee I give the keys of the Kingdom 
of Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind upon 
earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever 
thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in 
heaven." Matt. XVI, 19. And the Church, which is 
to endure to the end of time, is built upon a rock that 
can never perish. "Thou, art Peter and upon this rock 
I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall 
'not prevail against it." Matt. XVI, 18. 

Thus, the Papal Spiritual Sovereignty possesses 
three great distinguishing prerogatives : first, It is the 
rock upon which the impregnable Church is built ; the 
^crested billows may rise in storm and foam but they 
break harmless at its feet ; second, The Supreme Pon- 
tiff holds the keys ; he makes the decrees to be obeyed 
on earth, and ratified in heaven; third, He feeds with 
sound doctrine the lambs and sheep of the Church 
of God over which he rules. What the other Apos- 
tles received, Peter, the Pontiff of the Apostles, re- 
ceived in fullness and supremacy. "Where Peter is, 
there is the Church," says St. Ambrose. "Do you 
want to know who is the faithful Christian ; ask him 
is he in communion with Peter's successor?" 

The Pope, then, is the mouth of the Church. 
Through him speaks the mystic body of Christ. When, 



164 The Facts About Luther 

acting as the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, 
he proclaims to the world doctrine or decision on 
faith or morals, he is infallible. The infallibility 
of St. Peter's Chair ever endures by virtue of Our 
Lord's prayer, "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith 
fail not and thou being once converted, confirm thy 
brethren." Luke XXII, 32. 

There is hardly a teaching of the Catholic Church 
that has been so grievously misrepresented by those 
who profess to be enlightened ministers of the Gos- 
pel, and so strangely misapprehended by our separated 
brethren, as the infallibility of the Pope. Non-Catho- 
lics have been taught and many of them labor under 
the impression that Papal Infallibility is a new doc- 
trine of the Church, that it imparts to the Pope the 
extraordinary gift of inspiration, makes him impec- 
cable, confers the right to trespass on civil authority, 
and, even to play fast and loose with the Command- 
ments of God. These and other equally ridiculous 
conceptions are presented in the most plausible and 
spicy manner to a gullible public, ever ready to swal- 
low without a qualm any statement, no matter how 
preposterous, provided it reviles and injures the 
Church of the living God. The promoters of the cam- 
paign of misrepresentation are jealous of the Pope's 
authority, and, like the father of Protestantism, resort 
to every means, no matter how unfair, to throw ob- 
stacles in the way to keep people from entering the 
one sheepfold of the One great Shepherd of Souls. 
If, however, such a thing as Church unity could be 
effected among themselves and their hundred and more 
warring religious organizations, we imagine it would 
be no time before Protestantism would attempt to have 
a Pope of its own. 

All who are" anxious to know what Papal Infalli- 
bility really means are advised to consult the decrees 
of the Vatican Council held on July 18, 1870, over 
which Pius IX. presided, surrounded by nearly 700 
bishops gathered together from all over the world, rep- 
resenting more than 30 nations and more than 250,- 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 165 

000,000 Christians. In that general Council, the twen- 
tieth held by the Church, it was solemnly and offi- 
cially defined that Catholics are bound to believe that 
the Pope is infallible only when he speaks ex cathedra, 
that is, from the chair of Peter, 1, in discharge of his 
office as supreme teacher of the Universal Church ; 2, 
by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority; 3, de- 
fining a doctrine, giving an absolutely final decision 
regarding^ aith or morals ; 4, addressing the Universal 
Church ; 5, binding her to hold the doctrine he so 
defines. 

When this doctrine is rightly understood, it means, 
to put it briefly, that God will keep the Pope from 
teaching error and falsehood, in faith or morals, when 
he acts as head of the Universal Church. The powe*-, 
of the Pope then is far from being, as so many sup- 
pose, arbitrary, absolute, and despotic. It is rightly 
limited in many respects and there is nothing in it 
to disturb or make any one think that the Pontiff is 
at liberty to change the Scriptures, to alter the Divine 
law or impose doctrines not contained in the original 
revelation completed by Christ in the beginning of the 
Church, Acting in his private capacity, as a temporal 
sovereign or as Bishop of the diocese of Rome, the 
Pope, having free-will and being human, can err in 
morals or in judgment. He is not impeccable and it 
is false to allege that he claims to be. He cannot make 
right wrong or wrong right. His authority like the 
Kingdom of Christ, is "not of this world." His juris- 
diction belongs to spiritual matters, and is always for 
good, for truth, for the cause of Christ, for the welfare 
of souls, for the promotion of religion. 

It is silly, then, in the highest degree of silliness, 
to be alarmed at the teaching of the Catholic Church 
on Papal Infallibility, and allege that this doctrine puts 
one's intellect and conscience in a state of thraldom 
and servitude. The privilege enjoyed by the Pope 
cannot be exercised arbitrarily. It is used only after 
study and prayer and regard for the welfare of the 
Universal Church, and then it must fulfill all the five 



166 The Facts About Luther 



conditions already enumerated and demanded by the 
dogma, as defined by the Vatican Council. Then Papal 
decisions in faith and morals are so guided by Divine 
Providence, according to Christ's own promise, as 
ever to be infallibly true ; and, to the farthest extremi- 
ties of the world every faithful Christian admits in 
his heart what every loyal son of the Church obeys in 
his act. It is not the man, remember, that is infalli- 
ble, it is Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ determines 
what that man, who holds the keys, shall teach when 
"he feeds the lambs and sheep" of his Master. Far 
then from arousing opposition, the doctrine of Papal 
Infallibility, which is the keystone in the arch of 
Catholic faith, and which has preserved her marvel- 
us unity of belief throughout the world from the 
beginning, ought to command the unqualified admira- 
tion of every reflecting mind. 

The Papacy for well nigh two thousand years has 
been in this world where all things disappear, and 
never has a century passed in which the Popes have not 
conferred innumerable benefits on mankind. They en- 
abled their followers to save the Christian religion 
when the wild pagans broke through the Roman army 
and swept down on Rome, laying waste with fire and 
sword to the utter destruction of everything holy, 
ennobling, and uplifting. No other organization could 
have met these savage peoples save that one organiza- 
tion, the Catholic Church. Without the Popes there 
would be no Christianity in the world to-day, for 
there would be neither authority, nor infallibility, nor 
unity. And could there be law without authority, reve- 
lation without certainty, in the midst of a society 
without unity? Every organization that accomplishes 
anything must have a dominant head, and even the 
United States, as great as she is to-day, would not 
last three months without a supreme ruler. Some 
complain that infallibility fetters the human mind, but 
they should remember that this infallibility regards 
subjects which the human mind unaided would never 
have discovered, or if discovered, could never without 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 167 

infallibility, have trusted and reposed upon. Without 
infallibility what thoughtful man could honestly de- 
clare his unhesitating and lasting conviction in an 
accurately worded profession of faith, declaring his 
hopes for the future and the means appointed by God 
whereby he may secure that future? 

But the world is inconsistent. It is ever wearying 
of thosejwho would serve it. It mistrusts its truest 
friends, It persecutes those who would help it. Jeru- 
salem crucified Jesus Christ. The rulers imprisoned 
St. Peter in the midst of that city where his shadow 
had healed the sick and his words strengthened 
the withered limbs. All his successors for the first 
three hundred years sealed their profession of the 
faith with their own blood. Thenceforward every 
Pope desired to pursue his heavenly mission in peace 
and quiet, but enemies of the Church arose to strike 
at the chief shepherd in the hope of involving the 
whole flock. The boldest and most daring of these 
was Martin Luther, who aimed to pla<:e himself on an 
equality with the Pope and to impose his personal 
views for the acceptance of mankind. During a long 
period of his life, according to his own testimony given 
in "the Preface to his Works, he was so besotted with 
the Papacy that "he would have killed or helped to 
kill any one who rejected one iota of the Pope's 
teaching.." But ambition and rebellious thoughts, after 
some time, agitated his mind, and growing restless, 
discontented, and dissatisfied in all his earlier faith 
taught him to venerate, he yielded to the temptation 
"to make," as he says in a letter to the Augustinians 
of Wittenburg, "a stand alene against the Pope and 
hold him forth as Antichrist." Well might he write 
to the priest Leitzken : "Pray for me, for I grow more 
miserable every day. I am constantly drawing nearer 
to hell." The pleadings of grace in his soul were 
hushed and in a spirit of self-confidence never mani- 
fested by any one before his day, he finally brought 
himself as Alzog says, "to indulge the pleasing delu- 
sion that he himself was John the Evangelist, ban- 



168 



The Facts About Luther 



ished by Domitian to the island of Patmos : a second 
Paul or Isaias." Pride and "the prosperity of fools" 
led him on to destruction, and he who once wrote 
to Pope Leo X., "I acknowledge your voice as that 
of Christ who presides and speaks in you," turned 
in rankest hypocrisy and supreme effrontery to make 
out "that the Sovereign Pontiff was not the chief head 
of all Christendom," that "the time had come to cease 
to be the puppets of the Roman Pontiff," and that 
"the Papacy should be destroyed." 

Leo X., like all his predecessors, who ever showed 
a paternal love and an affectionate compassion for the 
wayward, labored to bring Luther to a realization of 
his sad condition, but to no purpose. He would no 
longer acknowledge the voice of the shepherd of 
the whole flock "as that of Christ" and this ingrate 
and lawless one, reckless in calumny, groundless in 
assertion, with the cursing and bitterness and deceit 
that filled his mouth, went throughout the land "deter- 
mined," as he said, "to crush the Papacy" and bury 
it "under the weight of his thunders and lightnings." 
He was the first in all Christendom to raise the cry 
"No Popery." Why? Because he wanted no author- 
ity in religion save his own. 

In the spirit of an apostate, he was now prepared 
to go to any lengths to vent his irrational hatred of 
the Holy See, the impregnable citadel of the com- 
munion of the true children of God. For nearly 
twenty years, he occupied himself in pouring forth a 
whole series of denunciations and insults against di- 
vine, ecclesiastical authority. His virulence and rage 
against the Holy See and its respected representative 
was so bitter and intense that "he could not" as we 
read in Hazlitt's Michelet, pp. 229-230, "pray without 
intermingling maledictions with his orisons. "If," he 
says, "I exclaim : Hallowed be Thy Name, I am, as it 
were constrained to add: Cursed be the name of 
Papists and of those who blaspheme against Thee. If I 
say: Thy Kingdom Come, I must put in: Cursed be 
the Papacy, and all the other kingdoms which are 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 169 

opposed to Thine. If I pray: Thy will be done, I 
rejoin: Cursed be the Papacy and may their designs 
be overthrown who oppose Thy commands. " The in- 
tensity of his bitterness towards the Head of the 
Church was especially manifested on leaving the Coun- 
cil of Schmalkalden, when he made the sign of the 
cross over the assembled crowds and cried out : "May 
the Lordlfill you with hatred of the Pope." 

Carried away by his wild aspirations for dominance 
he was convinced that he was to outlast the Papacy. 
In his insanity, he forgot, however, that the chair of 
Peter was like the Ark of the Covenant. No Uzzah 
ever touched it irreverently and remained unscathed. 
The keen-sighted Voltaire, another apostate, very aptly 
expressed this historic truth in the famous saying: 
"He who eats Pope, dies of it." The Cynic of Ferney 
read in the world's annals a truth to which Luther 
remained blind. "He remained blind to it," as Ander- 
don says, "because the evil passions to which he sur- 
rendered himself, his jealousy, his arrogance, and 
obstinate wrong-headedness and lust of dominion, and 
sensual downward tendencies, had caused the light 
that was in him to become darkness." 

The keynote of his whole movement of Reforma- 
tion is sounded in the Latin line he wrote on a piece 
of plaster at a banquet, "where the Princes enter- 
tained him magnificently and regaled him with the 
finest Rhenish wine," and where, as Seckendorf tells, 
"he drank like a true German" : 

"Pestis eram vivus, moriens tua mors ero Papa." 

"Living I was your pest; dying, O Pope, I shall 
be your death." 

The merrj guests, delighted with his humor, sat 
down, and Luther "continued to vent his wit in sar- 
casms against his natural enemies, the pope, the em- 
peror, the monks, and also the devil, whom he did 
not forget, to the delight of the frivolous and bibulous 
company." As the boisterous and irreverent crowd 
rose from the table, a report of the death of Paul III. 
reached them. Luther, delighted at the news, cried 



170 The Facts About Luther 



out, exultingly, "This is the fourth Pope I have buried : 
I shall bury many more of them." He that dwelleth 
in heaven, however, laughed at the prediction. Luther 
was taken suddenly ill and in spite of all the atten- 
tion of his assembled guests in a few hours he was 
called to the judgment seat of God to render an ac- 
count of his long and bitter opposition to the Church 
and its legitimate representative. "He ate Pope and 
died of it." 

Meanwhile, the Papacy, of which Luther was to 
be the death and to see the end, what became of it? 
Let Lord Macaulay give answer. "The Papacy," he 
says, "remains : not in decay, not a mere antique, but 
full of life and youthful vigor. The Catholic Church 
is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world 
missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent 
with Augustine: and still confronting hostile kings in 
the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The 
number of her children is greater than in any former 
age. The acquisitions in the new world have more 
than compensated her for what she has lost in the 
old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the vast 
countries which lie between the plains of Missouri and 
Cape Horn ; countries which a century hence, may not 
improbably contain a population as large as that which 
now inhabits Europe. Nor do we see any signs which 
indicate that the term of her long duration is approach- 
ing. She saw the commencement of all the govern- 
ments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that 
now exist in the world ; and we feel no assurance that 
she is not destined to see the end of them all." (Macau- 
lay, "Essay on Ranke's History of the Popes.") 

Such is the estimate of a man whose prejudices were 
all against the Church of God. His common sense 
and acquaintance with facts, however, compelled him 
to laud her services and predict her perpetuity. Since 
his day hundreds upon hundreds, whose views of his- 
tory were often distorted by prejudice, have admitted 
in all fairness that popular ignorance, - superficial 
knowledge and malicious slander have in many in- 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 171 

stances misrepresented the teachings of the Catholic 
Church, and contemplating her marvelous career, her 
triumphs over wars, empires and kingdoms arrayed 
against her and her firm, consistent and persevering 
stand for law and order, have declared that she is the 
most splendid institution the world has ever seen. They 
came to recognize that never has a century passed 
without the Popes conferring innumerable benefits on 
mankind, that they have literally been the civilizers 
and the evangelizers of the world, that during many 
centuries they denounced slavery and finally suppressed 
it, that they guarded the sanctity of marriage, en- 
couraged learning -and the arts, and that they alone 
have been able to make a periodical and lengthened 
peace between contending nations in Europe. These 
disinterested witnesses could not in fairness withhold 
the meed of praise so justly due the Papacy for its 
eminent and distinguished services to mankind. In- 
deed, mercy, justice and charity have ever flourished 
according to the extent of the Papal influence. 

A belief in the Lord and His teaching and respect 
for His representative on earth, has ever been the real 
magnet that draws and holds the splendid loyalty of 
the Catholic people. Catholics know that their Church 
is the frue Church of Christ, that it is international 
in character, that its coxnforting worship is the same 
for all throughout the universe, and that its head 
stands as an authority Divinely guaranteed in all mat- 
ters that pertain to faith and morals. They realize 
that Divine truth which was given for the universal 
benefit of mankind, could not be left without protec- 
tion and was never intended to be a mere plaything 
in the hands of fallible men. They know that their 
religion antedates all man-made forms of belief and 
they can tell when, where, and by whom all the vari- 
ous religious denominations originated. They know 
that outside of God's own guarantee and everlasting 
endowment truth cannot be found, that other Chris- 
tian churches cannot consistently claim succession from 
Christ Himself, and, therefore, their teaching is not 



172 



The Facts About Luther 



the Christ-founded or guaranteed creed, and their 
religion, cannot be as good, as true, as the religion of 
the Church founded by Jesus Christ Himself. With 
Catholics one religion is not as good as another. Truth 
cannot possibly admit error, and since perfect truth 
prevails with God alone, then in God's own Church 
only can the perfect truth be found. One leligion 
would be as good as another if all religions were es- 
tablished by men. The Catholic religion was estab- 
lished by Christ Himself and as He was God and 
perfection itself, it is impossible to improve on His 
word or work. With Catholics the one religion is that 
of the Church founded by Christ-, the Holy Catholic 
Apostolic Church, of which Peter, the Fisherman, was 
the first Bishop at Rome. The line of his successors 
is unbroken down to the present ruler of the Holy < 
See. Thus they are aware of the certainty of their 
position, and they are confident that as their Church 
came by the blood and sacrifice of millions of martyrs, 
and remained ever since to execute her heavenly mis- 
sion, she will endure to the end despite the protest and 
opposition of the malicious who vilify and misrepresent 
her. The Catholic Church has stood adamant for 
nearly two thousand years and no efforts of a lot of 
spiritual degenerates like Luther, Calvin, Zwingle and 
company, will ever prevail against her. 

This certainty of belief, as well as the solace and 
peace found in the Catholic Church under the he-ad- 
ship of Peters successors, was never offered by 
Luther to his followers in revolt or given by any of 
the various denominations that imitated their master 
in his rebellious course. The principle on which Luther 
started his new religion destroyed entirely in its very 
inception the possibility of any certainty of Christian 
creed and faith. The right of every individual to in- 
terpret the Scripture and judge for himself in all 
matters of religion was ruinous and destined to fail- 
ure. "In theory, private judgment," as Preston says, 
"destroys both the creed and the possibility of faith. 
There can be no creed where each individual is the 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 173 

maker of his own faith. There can be no unity of 
faith where all matters of belief are referred to the 
individual judgment. One man is as good as an- 
other in finding out his faith and in interpretating 
Scripture, or tradition, or history; and more than 
that, this private judgment is not simply his privilege 
but it is his duty. All are bound, even the ignorant 
and unlettered, to decide for themselves when there 
is no Divine authority and Divine witness, and thus 
you have as many creeds as there are individuals/' 

'Then, the principle of private judgment destroys 
the possibility of faith ; for where there is no external 
authority there can be no exercise of faith, for, be it 
remembered, faith is the belief in that which God 
delivers to man. Now if God does not speak to the 
individual, he cannot exercise faith ; and surely, no 
one is vain enough to say that his own judgment is 
to him a Divine testimony. What each individual can 
prove on his own judgment is his own opinion and 
his individual conception stands for what it is worth. 
But, as for the voice of God, men must hear it from 
an external and an infallible authority before they 
can believe, for to believe is not to entertain an opin- 
ion, nor to know some truth by induction or logic, 
nor to search it out by science, but it is to believe it 
and receive it because God declares it to be so, and 
because, as the Sovereign Truth, He neither can de- 
ceive nor be deceived. On the private judgment theory 
of Luther there is no possibility of an external 
testimony." 

Friedrich Paulsen, a non-Catholic writer, says : "The 
principle of 1521, viz., to allow no authority on earth 
to dictate the terms of faith, is anarchical; with it no 
Church can exist. . . .The starting-point and the justi- 
fication of the whole Reformation consisted in the 
complete rejection of all human authority in matters 
of faith. . . .If, however, a Church is to exist, then the 
individual must subordinate himself and his belief to 
the body as a whole. To do this is his duty, for re- 
ligion can only exist in a body, i.e., in a Church." 



174 



The Facts About Luther 



"Revolution is the term by which the Reformation 
should be described. . .Luther's work was no Reforma- 
tion, no 're-forming' of the existing Church by means 
of her own institutions, but the destruction of the old 
shape, in fact, the fundamental negation of any Church 
ajt all. He refused to admit any earthly authority in 
matters of faith, and regarding morals his position 
was practically the same; he left the matter entirely 
to the individual conscience. . . .Never has the pos- 
sibility of the existence of any ecclesiastical authority 
whatsoever been more rudely denied." 

Wherever Luther's cardinal principle of private judg- 
ment has been carried out in practice it has invariably 
resulted in the destruction of the unity of the Chris- 
tian faith and even of faith itself. Look at the con- 
dition of Christendom since this man first advocated 
the right of every individual to judge for himself in 
matters of religion. At the period of his revolt there 
was, with the exception of the Greek schism, only one 
faith in which all who called themselves * Christians 
united. Now, if you look out beyond the pale of the 
Catholic Church, where can you find a semblance of 
unity, even in matters that might be called funda- 
mental? And who among fallible men has the right 
to declare which are fundamental and which are not 
fundamental articles? Surely on every side are the 
variations of Protestantism. Its adherents, like its 
formulator, have contradicted themselves over and 
over again ; pulpit stands against pulpit, and individual 
against individual, and sect against sect, and even in 
the same denomination there is not unity of faith. 
There is not, we believe, a single Protestant church 
in the whole world where the members of one single 
congregation are solidly united together in the unity 
of one certain faith. So, if facts count for anything, 
they proclaim the utter confusion which has resulted 
from Luther's effort to destroy the authority of the 
Church- and the headship of the Pope. Even the Bible, 
called "the religion of Protestants/' but which must 
be believed either on the authority of the Catholic 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 175 

Church or on no authority at all, has suffered at their 
hands; it has been torn into pieces; its supernatural 
character has been interpreted away and some or all 
of it has been filched of inspiration. Some Books are 
received and some are not received. In many churches 
large portions of the Sacred Record are treated as the 
father of jbhe Reformation gave example in his day. 

The great trouble with the Protestant belief all 
along has been its elasticity. In our day we count its 
denominations by the hundreds. On almost every 
street corner, we face a church of a different per- 
suasion, such as Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, 
Methodist, Universalist, Latter Day Saints, etc., etc. 
The Protestant people are at constant variance with 
one another. They may for a time hold to the tenets 
and dogmas of the parent body from which they 
spring, but ever and anon, dissensions arise, and after 
a time the factions separate and announce a doctrine of 
their own and acknowledge no allegiance to any other 
sect or creed. If you doubt this, just investigate the 
discipline and the authority of any of the Protestant 
beliefs and you will at once discover the truth of the 
statement. And, yet, Protestants wonder at the steady 
and alarming decrease in their ranks and the conse- 
quent tendency of the day to abandon all religious 
profession. The reason is clear. They lack the great 
essential, unity of faith ; they lack the dominant author- 
ity to satisfy their followers in the belief of the Di- 
vinity of Jesus Christ and the true Church, and, as a 
result, their belief ceases to appeal to them and they 
withdraw from active church participation. 

It is astonishing how common it is nowadays to 
meet people, who say they were brought up Luth- 
erans, Baptists, Methodists, or Presbyterians, but de- 
clare they no longer have any definite belief. They 
were taught that religion is a purely personal matter 
which each individual is competent to decide for him- 
self, and in consequence they grow careless towards 
religious questions and, losing the sense of a posi- 
tive obligation to God to seek the truth as it is in 



176 The Facts About Luther 



Christ Jesus and His Church, they turn away from 
their original creeds to join the ranks of the indif- 
ferent, the free-thinking, and the unbelieving. All 
Protestant denominations alike have been hit by these 
desertions. In this country alone, we face the appal- 
ling fact that out of nearly a hundred million people, 
there are fully sixty million who profess no religion 
whatever. This condition is sad beyond expression 
and should be the deep concern of every citizen having 
a love of his fellow-man and the stability of the Con- 
stitution at heart, for so surely as Christianity lessens 
in the estimation of our countrymen, just so surely 
will the spirit of self-sacrifice on which it is founded 
disappear and lawlessness and anarchy reign. It should 
be remembered that Christianity does infinitely more 
than any other agency to preserve law and order and 
to bring contentment into the lives of the people. 

Luther separated Christianity from the old and solid 
foundations upon which it rested and shutting it up 
within the covers of the Bible he changed the Chris- 
tian church into a veritable "Pandemonium where all 
dreams, all half truths, and all errors, disported them- 
selves at ease and celebrated their Sabbath." As he 
rejected with indignation all historical and traditional 
data in matters of faith and thereby kicked away the 
foundations of all fixed, solid and enlightened belief, 
there was nothing left for his followers but deism, 
naturalism, indifferentism or contempt of all revealed 
religion. He ventured to match his intellect against 
the Infinite Intellect and the result was confusion and 
desolation. Church statistics point to the fact that 
his revolutionary work has been all along and is now, 
with its multitudinous divisions of opinions and doc- 
trines, a lamentable failure. 

When Charles V. saw and heard Luther at the 
Diet of Worms, he said, "That man would never make 
me a Protestant." He was right and thousands upon 
thousands had cause enough to reach a similar con 1 
clusion. The lovers of novelty, however, the scoffers, 
the indifferent and a large number of the ruling sover- 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 177 

eigns who had their axes to grind, were not as keen 
in their judgment of the heresiarch as the loyal and 
faithful children of Holy Church and they easily be- 
came victims of the monster of impertinence, folly, 
and pride. The weak, dissolute, and rebellious of the 
day were ready to embark on the ways of innovation. 
For years the ranks of those who were captivated by 
Luther's absurdities and held in intellectual slavery by 
his abominable errors increased to an alarming extent 
and made giant headway, to the detriment of the true 
faith throughout the land. God, however, was with 
His Church and would not suffer the rebellious to 
triumph. 

Towards the year 1555, there came an amazing 
change, brought about by a great revival of religious 
life within the Church. Rapidly as Protestantism had 
spread in the beginning, its repulse was equally swift. 
While the apostate friar was raving against Rome 
over his beer in the Black Eagle- Tavern, where he 
spent most of his evenings amid his dissolute dis- 
ciples, and slanderously charging "the Pope and his 
crew," as he sarcastically designated them, "with 
hatred and dread of the very word, Reformation," 
the Council of Trent had met to restore to the purity 
and grave moral character of the ancient discipline 
and Church government whatever in the lives of clergy 
and people was contrary to that spirit and discipline; 
and also to renew and restate with great precision and 
detail the doctrines which came down from the Apos- 
tles in order to oppose them to the errors and the in- 
novations of the period. Thus Rome showed to the 
world that reformation is the very life of the Church. 
The voice of her chief Pastor now resounds through- 
out the Christian world and the stray sheep wearied, 
emaciated unto spiritual death, deceived by the false 
promises of liberty and emancipation which the hire- 
ling could not fulfill, return in humility and penitence 
to be nourished and fed as of old in the rich pasture 
of sound doctrine and of moral rectitude provided 
in the one sheepfold of the One great Shepherd of 



178 The Facts About Luther 



Souls. Luther's pre-eminence as the leader of a 
party of malcontents waned. Time showed him to 
be a deceiver, and the thoughtful who studied his 
revolutionary purpose, analyzed his wicked pronounce- 
ments and witnessed his scandalous behavior, con- 
cluded they were neither economically, socially nor 
spiritually as well off as before the Lutheran brand 
of Reformation was proclaimed, and went back in 
masses to the faith which in an evil moment they had 
abandoned. In the short interval of a decade, from 
1-555 t0 1565, the Lutheran cause lost enormously, and 
ever since, as history and experience attest, it has 
gradually gone the way of all things human. 

The revival of Catholicity at this period is one of 
the marvels of history and the position it gained in 
those years has never since been lost. The Church, 
ever true to her sublime mission, redoubled her efforts 
in behalf of souls. Imbued with renewed vigor, 
she went out everywhere to remind the unfaithful of 
the misery and desolation of apostasy from God and 
the Christian faith, with the result that thousands 
upon thousands hearkened to her appeals and sub- 
mitted to her Divine authority and saving influence. 
The conversion movement advanced with giant strides. 
Coming down to our own day, it is growing stead- 
ily as men realize more and more how their fore- 
fathers were robbed of the faith by Luther, and 
apprehend that there is no logical middle ground be- 
tween the Catholic faith and the purely agnostic phil- 
osophy of which Protestantism is the parent. In Ger- 
many conversions are numerous and the population, by 
virtue of a superior birth-rate, is steadily shifting 
towards a larger Catholic parentage, so much so that 
even non-Catholic writers admit that in less than a 
century the Fatherland will have a preponderance o£ 
Catholics. In England, Scotland, and Wales conver- 
sions average eight thousand a year. In the United 
States they run close to forty thousand a year. The 
movements now going on in the Church of England, 
in the Episcopal Church of America, and in other 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 179 

denominations clamoring for unity will inevitably lead 
many more into the ranks of the one, true Church 
established by Jesus Christ. 

In the past the Catholic Church has~ achieved vic- 
tories in the face of the world's greatest opposition 
and she will continue to achieve victories until the 
whole Christian world will be Catholic. Her mission 
is to realize the prayer of her Founder that there shall 
be One Faith, One Fold, One Shepherd. She desires 
all who as yet do not believe in Christ to become Chris- 
tians and enter into communion with the one Church 
which Christ established, in order, to glorify God by 
the universal acceptance of the institution founded by 
His Divine Son and to convert, sanctify, and save 
souls. Her aim is to prepare men for Heaven, to 
bring them to a knowledge of God, the love and serv- 
ice of Christ and the practice of virtue, to administer 
to them grace-giving sacraments and to offer up the 
adorable sacrifice of the Mass for their benefit. Out- 
side the sphere of faith, morals and discipline, she 
has no desire and makes no claims to enter, no matter 
what stories her enemies may circulate to her detri- 
ment. She knows her business too well to dabble in 
things that lie outside of the object for which she 
was established, and hence in all matters which are 
purely temporal, purely political, purely secular, she 
neither claims nor exercises jurisdiction. Her author- 
ity relates to religion only, and hence all who go about 
telling the. people that the object of the Church in 
her desire to advance Catholicity is to enrich her 
treasury and to see her head, the Pope, king or emperor 
or supreme civil potentate of the universe, are only 
helping the devil to deceive the ignorant, foment strife, 
and perpetuate the grossest of calumnies. These 
maligners of the Church and the Papacy who fatten on 
deception are like their father Beelzebub, "liars and 
the truth is not in them." 

The bigoted disturbers in our midst may decry the 
fact that every Catholic the world over recognizes 
the Pope as the supreme head and final judge of mat- 



180 The Facts About Luther 



ters religious, but they should understand that this 
loyalty is based on the knowledge that the Catholic 
Church is the true church of Christ and the only one 
that makes the word "Catholic" mean what it is 
intended to mean. By close observation, they will 
discover that the Pope's power and authority are 
modest indeed, when contrasted with that of many 
of the sovereigns- of the day who are not satisfied 
with the mere temporal rule of their respective coun- 
tries, but claim also supreme spiritual dominion over 
their subjects. Is it not a fact that the King of 
England is the recognized head of the Church in 
that land and that this Church is the fountain head 
of the American denomination? Is it not a fact 
that the Czar of Russia is the head of the Russian 
Orthodox Church and that Russians acknowledge 
him as supreme in matters spiritual? Is it not a 
fact that the Emperor of Germany is the head of the 
Prussian Lutheran Church and that all Lutherans in 
Prussia recognize the Kaiser as their spiritual chief? 
What have the bigots to say to this? Can they dis- 
prove these facts that are patent to every one who 
runs ? Do they ever allude to these conditions in their 
harangues against the Catholic Church and her legiti- 
mate representative? Do they ever charge the Eng- 
lishman, the Russian, or the Prussian in America w T ith 
disloyalty to the Stars and Stripes because in the pro- 
fession of their respective creeds they manifest alle- 
giance in spiritual matters to foreign potentates? Do 
they ever tell their deluded audiences that Luther and 
his followers were the framers of the principle that 
created the State Church? Do they ever tell that 
the so-called reformers held that kings rule by divine 
right, that they were autocrats, and therefore, could 
do as they willed in things spiritual as in things 
temporal? Do they ever tell how Luther flattered the 
princes till they became the aides of his religious 
movement? Do they ever tell that Luther was a con- 
summate politician willing to sacrifice any principle 
for political expediency? Do they ever tell, when he 



Luther on the Church and the Pope 181 

foresaw that his innovations were sure to lead to civil 
war, how he openly and boldly proclaimed the right 
and duty of armed resistance in the cause of his new 
doctrines ? Do they ever tell that he was the very one 
to urge the secular power to repress Catholicity as a re- 
bellion, that he labored to excite the populace to resort 
to arms to, spread his reformed doctrines and impose 
them by force on an unwilling community? Do they 
ever tell how the secular supremacy, advocated by the 
leaders of the reform movement, became unlimited in 
its claims and more arrogant in its assumptions than 
the Byzantine despotism of the Lower Empire? 

To these burning questions the bigots give no an- 
swer, for the reason that they know as little about 
these matters as they do about the Church and her 
respected head, whom they imagine they are especially 
called on, like their Master Luther, to denounce, oppose 
and persecute. A course of solid reading might help 
them to dispel their malice and correct their igno- 
rance. Investigation will show them one thing at least — 
that all who live in glass houses should be mindful 
not to throw stones at their neighbors. In the mean- 
time, we advise the bigots who claim a monopoly of 
patriotism to possess their souls in peace and to rest 
assured that the Catholic Church will never adopt, but 
always will oppose the principle which Luther fathered 
and gave to his religion, namely, the subservience of 
the Church to State domination. 

Of one thing we may all be certain, that come 
what will, the Catholic religion, which is not and does 
not aspire to become a state religion, shall remain for 
all time in all her truthfulness, beauty and strength, 
because she is the one universal religion established 
by God to endure to the consummation of the world; 
and that, moreover, when the chronicles of this crea- 
tion close, in its last page shall be recorded the per- 
petuity and endurance of the Roman Pontiff. Do 
not forget that amidst the terrors of the world's clos- 
ing scenes, one voice, ever gentle, constant, patient, 
hopeful, shall travel around the earth, bringing peace 



182 The Facts About Luther 



to every Christian heart; it will be the voice of the 
last Pope for the last time blessing the world. Then 
and then only will the Church militant cease her exist- 
ence on earth and pass to the glory of the Church 
triumphant in Heaven. 



CHAPTER VI. 



Luther and the Bible. 

DURING the last three hundred years and more it 
has Been widely and persistently proclaimed that 
Luther was the discoverer, the first translator and the 
only correct interpreter of the Bible. Ever since the 
so-called reformer threw off the authority of the one 
true Church of Christ and set himself up in its place, 
the story went the rounds, that when he was appointed 
librarian of his convent he "discovered among the dan- 
gerous and prohibited books" a copy of the Sacred 
Scriptures, carried it off to his cell, devoured it and 
was "converted/' The story was first put into cir- 
culation by Mathesius, Luther's pupil and a boarder in 
his house. It fascinated the simple, and many, ig- 
norant of the facts, came to believe that Luther ex- 
humed and dragged into the light of day the Holy 
Book that had lain for many dark ages in the dungeons 
and lumber rooms of Popery. Had Luther really 
accomplished such a notable feat, we should have just 
reason to sound his praises and offer him the expres- 
sion of our deepest gratitude. We are constrained, 
however disappointing it may be to his admirers, to 
declare in the interests of truth that the tale bearing 
on Luther and his discovery of the Bible has no 
foundation in historic fact and is entirely unworthy 
of credence. It is a fabrication pure and simple. It 
was invented to throw dust into the eyes of the illit- 
erate and to fan the flames of senseless bigotry. When- 
ever and wherever it is repeated, it has only one 
object in view, viz., to mislead the unwary into the 
belief that Rome hated the Bible, that she did her best 
to destroy it and that she concealed it from her people 
lest it should enlighten their supposed blindness. 

Of all the accusations laid at the door of the Church 
this one must appear to any person who does not 
wilfully shut his eyes to facts as the most ludicrous, 



184 The Facts About Luther 



and the truth is, it is ridiculed and put down by the 
learned as too silly to deny. It has been refuted and 
repudiated hundreds of times, and yet so venomous or 
ignorant are the propagators of error that they con- 
tinue with brazen effrontery to keep it in continual 
circulation. The story will not down. It is difficult 
to convince the ignorant of its preposterous falsity 
and it continues to be repeated in hostile circles for 
the vile purpose of catering to the low susceptibilities 
of those who never question the veracity of the false 
teacher. Although the story continues to be told, the 
truth is that the Church never hated the Bible, never 
persecuted it, never tried to blot it out of existence 
and never kept it from her people. The contrary is 
the fact. She has been the parent, the author and 
maker under God of the Bible; she has always been 
the only effective and consistent preserver of the 
Bible; she guarded it through the ages from error and 
destruction ; she has ever held it in highest veneration 
and esteem, and has ever grounded her doctrines upon 
it ; she alone has the right to call it her book and she 
alone possesses the Bible in all its fulness and 
integrity. 

This proud claim is not an idle boast. It is a fact 
which cannot be controverted. Serious and impartial 
students of the question are all in agreement on this 
point, and so true is this that no scholar of repute 
would to-day dare risk his reputation by giving to the 
public the silly and groundless stories circulated con- 
cerning the Church in her relation to the Bible and 
the inferences the unwary draw therefrom. To prove 
that Luther and his followers had little or no rever- 
ence for the Bible, that they changed and falsified it, 
that they tampered with it, and deliberately mistrans- 
lated numerous passages to buttress the new religion 
of Protestantism, is a much easier task than to show 
that the Catholic Church was ever afraid of the Bible, 
that she ever tried to keep the Scriptures away from 
the people and that there ever was a time in her history 
when she was not most anxious to copy, print and put 



Luther and the Bible 



185 



editions of the Holy Book in the hands of the faithful. 

That Luther did not discover and was not the first 
to give the Bible to the people in the latter's own 
language is easily proved. 

Fr. Lucian Johnston, in an able review of Grisar's 
Work, says: "Luther as well as every other man of 
education of his day was accustomed to the Scrip- 
tures from his youth. Like thousands of others in 
any other schools, he was a regularly appointed pro- 
fessor of Scripture. It was precisely this position as 
teacher of Scripture in his monastery that gave the 
outlet to his peculiar views. Had the Bible been as 
unknown as the popular biography supposes, Luther 
might not have developed as he did along Scriptural 
lines. Here again Luther's maturer memory played 
him tricks. He fell back for excuses upon the sup- 
posed lack of Scriptures just as he did upon the pres- 
ence of abuses, when, as a matter of fact, there is no 
evidence from his own earlier works to prove that 
these things exercised any material effect upon his 
early mental development." 

"Luther's studies/' according to McGiffert, a non- 
Catholic writer, in his biography of the Reformer 
. published in 1912, "embraced the writings of the 
Church Fathers and particularly the Bible, to which 
he was becoming more and more attached. It was in 
his twentieth year, he tells us, that he "first saw a 
complete copy of the Scriptures in the university 
library of Erfurt. He had hitherto supposed they 
embraced only the lessons read in the public services 
and was delighted to find much that was quite unfa- 
miliar to him. His ignorance, it may be remarked, 
though not exceptional, was his own fault. The 
notion that Bible reading was frowned upon by the 
ecclesiastical authorities of the age is quite unfounded." 
The Scriptures "were read regularly in church and 
their study was no more prohibited to university stu- 
dents of that day than of this." 

Professor Vedder of Crozer Theological Seminary, 
a non-Catholic author, in his work on the Reforma- 



186 



The Facts About Luther 



tion published in 1914, says : "The most recent writ- 
ers are inclined to discredit the story of his (Luther's) 
finding the Bible — as inherently incredible. They 
point out the facts regarding the circulation of the 
Bible, both Latin and vernacular, and tell us that 
Luther must have taken great pains to keep himself 
in a state of ignorance, if he knew no more about the 
Bible than this anecdote implies/' . . . "The real diffi- 
culty is not so much with the incident as with the 
inferences that have been drawn from it. Protestant 
writers have often seized on the occurrence as proof 
of the darkness of the times, of the indifference of 
the Church to the instruction of the people in the 
Scriptures and have by comparison exalted the work 
of the reformers in their translation and circulation 
of the Scriptures. What the incident actually proves 
i^ merely Luther's own personal ignorance. If he 
did not know that the passages which he had heard 
in church did not constitute the whole Bible, there 
were nevertheless in Germany many who did know 
this." (Vedder, pp. 5, 6.) 

The notion that people before the Reformation did 
not possess the Scriptures and that Luther was the 
first to translate them into the common language of 
the country, is not only a mistake, but a stupid blun- 
der. Every layman who has read history knows that 
the Church "in the olden days translated the Scriptures 
from the Hebrew and Greek into Latin for the benefit 
of her children. Latin was not then a dead language 
and an unknown tongue. It was a common language 
among the educated and was known,- spoken and 
written almost universally in Europe. In those days 
reading w r as a sign of a certain degree of scholarship 
and erudition and it would have been hard to have 
found any man capable of reading, who was not also 
capable of understanding Latin. The groundwork 
of all school learning was the knowledge of the 
Latin language. Dr. Peter Bayne, a Protestant, says 
in the Literary World, Oct., 1894: "Latin was then the 
language of all men of culture and to an extent prob- 



Luther and the Bible 



187 



ably far beyond what we at present realize, the com- 
mon language of Europe: in those days tens of thou- 
sands of lads, many of them poor, studied at the uni- 
versities and learned to talk Latin. The records of 
the proceedings in the courts of law were in those 
days in Latin and the wills of dying persons were 
commonly in the same tongue. As Latin was the pre- 
vailing language of the time, most people who knew 
it would certainly prefer to use the authorized Vulgate 
to any vernacular version/ 5 

The Rev. Charles Buck, a virulent Protestant, says : 
"Both old and new Testaments were translated into 
Latin by the primitive Christians : and while the Roman 
Empire subsisted in Europe, the reading of the Scrip- 
tures in the Latin tongue, which was the universal 
language of that Empire, prevailed everywhere." 
("Bible" in Theological Dictionary, by Rev. Charles 
Buck.) 

"No book," says The Cambridge Modern History, 
p. 639, "was more frequently republished than the 
Latin Vulgate, of which ninety-eight distinct and full 
editions appeared prior to 15QO, besides twelve others 
which contained the Glossa Ordinaria or the Postils 
of Lyranus. From 1475, when the first Venetian issue 
is dated, twenty-two complete impressions have been 
found in the city of St. Mark alone. Half a dozen 
folio editions came forth before a single Latin classic 
had been printed. This Latin text, constantly pro- 
duced or translated, was accessible to all scholars : it 
did not undergo a critical recension." In fact the Bible 
in its Latin dress, observes Mons. Vaughan, "was just 
as accessible to the people as it would have been if it 
had been in English. Neither more nor less. Lay 
this fact to heart, namely : Those who could read Latin 
could read the Bible and those who could not read 
Latin could not read anything." 

Whilst the Vulgate was in general use we know that 
translations into the vernacular of the various peoples 
were also made and read. In Germany, not to men- 
tion Italy, France, Spain, Denmark, Holland, Norway, 



188 The Facts About Luther 



Poland, Bavaria, Hungary and other countries, before 
the days of printing, we know that Raban Maur, born 
in Mantz in 776, translated the Old and New Testa- 
ment into the Teutonic or old German tongue. Some 
time later, Valafrid Strabon made a new translation 
of the whole Bible. Huges of Fleury also translated 
the Scriptures into German and the monk Ottfried of 
Wissemburg rendered it into verse. In Germany 
prior to the issue of Luther's New Testament in 1522, 
no authority enumerates fewer than fourteen editions 
in High German and three in Low German. -Those 
in High German," says Vedder, "are apparently re- 
prints of a single MS. version, of which two copies 
are still preserved, one in a monastery of Tepl, 
Bohemia, the other in the library of the University at 
Freiburg in the Breisgau. The former, known as the 
Codex Teplensis, has recently been printed and is 
accessible to all scholars/' The library of the Paulist 
Fathers of New York City contains, at present, a copy 
of the ninth edition of a German Bible profusely illus- 
trated with colored wood engravings and printed by 
A. Coburger at Nuremberg in 1483, the very year in 
which Luther was born. In the year 1892 the Protes- 
tant historian Wilhelm Walther published in Bruns- 
wick a book under the title, "The German Transla- 
tion of the Bible in the Middle Ages/' in which he 
proves that previous to the year 1521, before Luther 
ever thought of translating the Bible into the German 
language, there existed seventeen editions of the whole 
Bible in German, besides an almost countless number 
of German versions of the New Testament, the 
Psalms, and other parts of the Bible. He gives the 
following list of pre-Lutheran editions of the whole 
Bible in German, viz: Edition Mentel, Strassburg, 
A. D. 1466; edit Eggenstein, Strassburg, 1470; edit. 
Pflanzmann, Augsburg, 1473; edit. Zainer, Augsburg, 
1473; edit. Sorg, Augsburg, 1480; two editions of 
Koeln (Cologne) by Quentel, 1480; edit. Koburger, 
Nuernberg, 1483 ; edit. Grueninger, Strassburg, 1485 ; 
edit. Schoensperger, Augsburg, 1487; edit. Schoen- 



Luther and the Bible 



189 



sperger, Augsburg, 1490; edit. Arndes, Luebeck, 1494; 
edit. H. Otmar, Augsburg, 1507; the Swiss Bible, 
Basel, about 1474; edit. Zainer, Augsburg, 1477; and 
edit. S. Otmar, Augsburg, 15 18. 

The Protestant historian, Ludwig Hain, enumerates 
in his work, "Repertorium Bibliographicum," Stutt- 
gart, 1826, ninety-eight editions of the whole Bible in 
Latin, which appeared in print before the year 1501. 

Sixty copies of as many different editions of Latin 
and vernacular Bibles, all printed before 1503, were 
to be seen at the Caxton Exhibition in London, 1877; 
and seeing is believing. The Church Times, a Protes- 
tant journal, under date of July 26, 1878, writing of 
the list of Bibles in the catalogue of the Caxton Cele- 
bration, 1877, published by H. Stevens, says: "This 
Catalogue will be very useful for one thing at any 
rate, as disproving the popular lie about Luther finding 
the Bible for the first time at Erfurt about 1507. Not 
only are there very many editions of the Latin Vul- 
gate long anterior to that time, but there were actu- 
ally nine German editions of the Bible in the Caxton 
Exhibition earlier than 1483, the year of Luther's birth 
and at least three more before the end of the century." 
Mr. H. Stevens writes in the Athenaeum of October 
6, 1883, p. 434: "By 1507 more than one hundred 
Latin Bibles had been printed, some of them small 
and cheap pocket editions. There had been besides 
thirteen editions of a translation of the Vulgate into 
German, and others into other modern languages. . . . 
Among the most interesting additions latest made (to 
the Grenville Library in the British Museum) is a 
nearly complete set of fourteen grand old pre-Luther 
German Bibles, 1460-15 18, all in huge folios except 
the twelfth, which is in quarto form." These facts 
any student can verify by a visit to the British 
Museum, where most of the Bibles alluded to are to 
be seen. 

The Athenaeum of December 22, 1883, contains 
an article on "The German Bible before Luther" in 
which it is shown that what Geffeken calls "the Ger- 



190 The Facts About Luther 



man Vulgate" was in common use among the people 
long before Luther's time; that Luther had evidently 
the old Catholic German Bible of 1483 before him, 
when making his translation; and that consequently 
it is time we should hear no more of Luther as the 
first German Bible translator and of his translation 
as an independent work from the original Greek. 

The Protestant Professor Lindsay in his partisan 
work on the Reformation published in Edinburgh in 
1908 admits that "other translations of the Bible 
into the German language had been made long before 
Luther began his work." He says moreover: "It is 
a mistake to believe that the mediaeval Church atr 
tempted to keep the Bible from the people." 

Hallam, the non-Catholic historian, in his work on 
the "Middle Ages," chap. ix. part 2, says : "In the 
eighth and ninth centuries, when the Vulgate had 
ceased to be generally intelligible, there is no reason 
to suspect any intention in the Church to deprive the 
laity of the Scriptures. Translations were freely made 
into the vernacular languages, and, perhaps, read in 
churches .... Louis the Debonair is said to have caused 
a German version of the New Testament to be made. 
Otfrid, in the same century, rendered the Gospels, or,^ 
rather-, abridged them, into German verse. This work 
is still extant." 

The well-known Anglican writer, Dr. Blunt, in his 
"History of the Reformation" (Vol. I. pp. 501-502) 
tells us that ''there has been much wild and foolish 
writing about the scarcity of the Bible in the. ages 
preceding the Reformation. It has been taken for 
granted that the Holy Scripture was almost a sealed 
book until it was printed in English by Tyndale and 
Coverdale, and that the only source of knowledge re- 
specting it before then was the translation made by 
Wyckliffe. The facts are. . .that all laymen who could 
read were, as a rule, provided with their Gospels, 
their Psalter, or other devotional portions of the Bible. 
Mea did, in fact, take a vast amount of personal 
trouble with respect to the productions of the Holy 



Luther and the Bible 



191 



Scriptures ; and accomplished by head, hand and heart 
what is now chiefly done by paid workmen and machin- 
ery. The clergy studied the Word of God and made it 
known to the laity; and those few among the laity 
who could read had abundant opportunity of reading 
the Bible either in Latin or English, up to the Reforma- 
tion period. " 

Long before the art of printing was invented, about 
1450, the monks, friars, clergy, and even the nuns of 
the Catholic Church spent their lives in making copies 
of the Bible in vellum, so that it might be preserved, 
multiplied and scattered far and wide for the benefit 
of all readers. Their labors in this direction were 
constant, unceasing, and tireless. Through their in- 
dustry and perseverance in reproducing the Sacred 
pages from century to century every church and mon- 
astery and university was put in possession of copies 
of the Bible. The Bishops and Abbots of those days 
encouraged the work and were zealous propagators of 
the Scriptures. They required, moreover, all their 
priests to know, read, and study the Inspired Word. 
Councils like that of Toledo held in 835 issued decrees 
insisting that Bishops were bound to inquire through- 
out their dioceses whether the clergy were sufficiently 
instructed in the Bible. In some cases the clergy were 
obliged to know by heart not only the whole Psalter 
but, as under the rule of St. Pachomius, the New 
Testament as well. From time immemorial the 
Church always used a great portion of the Bible in 
the celebration of the Mass, in the Epistles and Gos- 
pels for 365 days of the year and in the Breviary 
which she enjoined her priests to recite daily. 

The Sacred Scriptures were always a favorite sub- 
ject of study among the clergy; and a popular occu- 
pation was the writing of commentaries upon them, 
as all priests are aware from having to recite a great 
many of them every day, ranging from the time of 
St. Leo the Great and St. Gregory down to St. 
Bernard and St. Anselm. The Scriptures besides were 
read regularly to the people and explained frequently 



193 The Facts About Luther 



both in church and school, through sermons, instruc- 
tions, and addresses, so that the faithful were steeped 
in, and permeated through and through with the in- 
spired Word of God. Paintings and statuary and 
frescoes and stained glass windows were used in the 
churches to depict Biblical subjects and fix on the 
people's memories and understandings the doctrines 
of faith and the great events in God's dealings with 
His creatures since the beginning of the world. 
Through these and other means, all, from the king 
down to the humblest peasant, came to know and 
understand the great and saving truths of religion as 
found in the Bible. The Scriptures were made so~ 
familiar that the people could repeat considerable por- 
tions from memory, and their frequent reference 
thereto by way of passing allusion is considered now 
very puzzling to those who are unacquainted with the 
phraseology of the Vulgate. Their ideas seemed to 
fall naturally into the words of Scripture and the 
language of the Bible passed into the current tongue 
of the people. 

One of the best evidences of the mediaeval atti- 
tude and practise in the matter of Bible-reading is 
furnished in the "Imitation of Christ" by Thomas a 
Kempis, published about the year 1425. A Kempis, 
who was a monk in the archdiocese of Cologne, had 
himself made a MS. copy of the Bible. In the first 
book, chapter I, of the "Imitation," there are some 
useful directions about reading the Holy Scriptures : 

"All Holy Scripture should be read in the spirit in 
which it was written. Our curiosity is of ten a hindrance 
to us in reading the Scriptures, when we wish 
to understand and to discuss, where we ought to pass 
on in simplicity. . . .If thou wilt derive profit, read 
with humility, with simplicity, with faith, and never 
wish to have the name of learning." 

In the eleventh chapter of the fourth book he says : 
"I shall have moreover for my consolation and a 
mirror of life Thy Holy Books, and above all Thy 
Most Holy Body for my especial remedy and -refuge. 



Luther and the Bible 



193 



. . .Whilst detained, in the prison of this body I 
acknowledge that I need two things, food and light. 
Thou hast therefore given to me, weak as I am, Thy 
Sacred Body for the nourishment of my soul and 
body, and Thou hast set Thy word as a light to my 
' feet. Without these two I could not live ; for the 
word of God is the light of my soul and Thy Sacra- 
ment is the bread of life. These also may be called 
the two tables set on either side in the storehouse of 
Thy Holy Church." 

"The mediaeval mind, as here laid down in the 
greatest work of the Middle ■ Ages, does not," as 
Desmond remarks, "seem to raise any questions as to 
whether it is wise to read the Bible or as to whether 
the Bible is difficult to procure. These matters are 
evidently not even contemplated as possible issues : on 
the contrary, the excellence of Scripture reading and 
its necessity as 'the light of the soul' are dwelt upon. 
Be it remembered, too, that this manual of A Kempis 
came at once into the hands of the laity as well as 
the clergy, for it went into the vernaculars of every 
nation in Europe only a few years after its first pub- 
lication." 

An enlightened Protestant writer, the Rev. Doctor 
Cutts, in a work published by the Society for Pro- 
moting Christian Knowledge, observes : "There is a 
good deal of popular misapprehension about the way 
in which the Bible was regarded in the Middle Ages. 
Some people think that it was very little read, even 
by the clergy: whereas the fact is that the sermons 
of the mediaeval preachers are moje full of Scripture 
quotations and allusions than any sermons in these 
days and the writers on other subjects are so full of 
Scriptural allusion that it is evident their minds were 
saturated with Scriptural diction, which they used as 
commonly and sometimes with as great an absence 
of good taste, as a Puritan of the Commonwealth." 

The Quarterly Review for Oct., 1879, dealing with 
Goulburn's Life of Bp. Herbert de Losinga, says : 'The 
notion that people in the Middle Ages did not read 



194 The Facts About Luther 



their Bibles is probably exploded, except among the 
more ignorant of controversialists. But a glance at 
this volume is enough to show that the notion is not 
simply a mistake, that it is one of the most ludicrous 
and grotesque of blunders. If having the Bible at 
their fingers ends could have saved the Middle Ages 
teachers from abuses and false doctrine, they .were 
certainly well-equipped. They were not merely accom- 
plished textuaries. They had their minds as saturated 
with the language and associations of the Sacred Text 
as the Puritans of the seventeenth century." 

Another Protestant writer, Dr. Maitland, in his 
valuable work 'The Dark Ages," page 220, says: "-To 
come, however, to the question, Did the people in 
the Dark Ages know anything of the Bible? Certainly, 
it was not as commonly known and as generally in 
the hands of men as it is now, and has been almost 
ever since the invention of printing — the reader must 
not suspect me of wishing to maintain any such absurd 
opinion ; but I do think that there is sufficient evidence 
(1) that during that period the Scriptures were more 
accessible to those who could use them, (2) were, in 
fact, more used, and (3) by a greater number of 
persons, than some modern writers^ would lead us to 
suppose." 

On page 470 the same author observes : "The writ- 
ings of the Dark Ages are, if I may use the expres- 
sion, made of the Scriptures. I do not merely mean 
that the writers constantly quoted the Scriptures, and 
appealed to them as authorities on all occasions, though 
they did this and it is a strong proof of their familiar- 
ity with them ; but I mean that they thought and spoke 
and wrote the thoughts and words and phrases of the 
Bible, and that they did this constantly and habitually, 
as the natural mode of expressing themselves." And 
again, he says : "I have not found anything about 
the arts and engines of hostility, the blind hatred of 
half barbarian kings, the fanatical fury of their sub- 
jects, or the reckless antipathy of the Popes. . . .1 know 
of nothing which should lead me to suspect that any 



Luther and the Bible 



195 



human craft or power was exercised to prevent the 
reading, the multiplication, the diffusion of the Word 
of God/' (I. 6, pp. 220-1.) 

Dr. Maitland in his work, p. 506, discounts the 
absurd story as told by D'Aubigne of Luther "dis- 
covering" a Bible for the first time when he was 
twenty years old. He says : "Before Luther was 
born the Bible had been printed in Rome, and the 
printers had the assurance to memorialize his Holi- 
ness, praying that he would help them off with some 
copies. It had been printed, too, at Naples, Florence, 
and Piacenza ; and Venice alone had furnished eleven 
editions. No doubt, we should be within the truth 
if we were to say that beside the multitude of manu- 
script copies, not yet fallen into disuse, the press had 
issued fifty different editions of the whole Latin Bible, 
to say nothing of Psalters, New Testaments, or other 
parts. And yet, more than twenty years after, we find 
a young man who had received a Very liberal educa- 
tion/ who 'had made great proficiency in his studies 
at Magdeburg, Eisenach, and Erfurt/ and who, never- 
theless, did not know what a Bible was, simply because 
'the Bible was unknown in those days/ 

Proofs without number might easily be adduced to 
show that the Bible was known, read and distributed 
with the sanction and authority of the Church in 
the common language of the people from the seventh 
to the fourteenth century. Enough, however, hafve 
been given, and we hope these will carry some 
weight with intelligent and well disposed non-Cath- 
olics. The contention of the ignorant and bigoted 
who would have the simple and unlettered believe 
that Rome hated the Bible and did her best to keep 
it a locked and sealed book, is so utterly absurd and 
stupid that all honest and patient researches of dis- 
tinguished scholars flatly and openly oppose it by 
accumulating evidence from the simplest facts of his- 
tory. Instead of misrepresenting the Church, it would 
be more consistent with honor and truth to proclaim 
from the house-tops the debt all owe to the pious and 



196 



The Facts About Luther 



untiring labors of the monks and nuns and clergy of 
the Middle Ages who saved the written Word of God 
from extinction and without whose precious and dis- 
tinguished services the world to-day would not rejoice 
in its possession. When will our dissenting brethren 
se« things as they are? When will they be candid 
enough to read history aright? When will they, in 
the presence of the Church's jealous guardianship 
of the Bible from the beginning, rid themselves of 
the silly mouthings of anti-Catholic bigots in declaring 
that Luther was the very first to give his poor lan- 
guishing countrymen the Bible in their own tongue, 
a book which as a student in Erfurt he knew was 
held in high esteem and which as a monk and priest 
he was obliged by rule to have known, studied and 
recited for years? To maintain that Luther knew 
and could not find any Bibles except the one he was 
supposed to discover as librarian of his convent, is 
to brand him as a liar. It is interesting now to recall 
what Zwingle, the Swiss Reformer, who made many 
false boasts for himself, once said to Luther: "You 
are unjust in putting forth the boastful claim of drag- 
ging the Bible from beneath the dusty benches of the 
schools. You forget that we have gained a knowledge 
of the Scriptures through the translations of others. 
You are very well aware, with all your blustering, 
that previously to your time there existed a host of 
scholars who, in Biblical knowledge and philological 
attainments, were incomparably your superiors." 
(Alzog. Ill, 49.) 

The Catholic Church reigned supreme for more 
than fifteen hundred years before Luther introduced 
his special conception of the Bible. During this long 
period the Church had it in her power to do with the 
Bible what she pleased. Had she hated it she could 
easily have dragged into the light of day every copy 
then in existence, and were she so disposed could 
have destroyed and reduced all to ashes. But did 
she do this? The truth is that the Catholic Church, 
ruled by the Pope, instead of getting rid of the Bible, 



Luther and the Bible 



197 



saved, preserved, and guarded it all through the cen- 
turies from its institution and formation into one 
volume in 397 A. D., to the sixteenth century. All 
along she employed her clergy to multiply it in the 
Greek and Hebrew languages, and to translate it into 
Latin and the common tongues of every Christian 
nation that all might read and learn and know the 
Word of God. She and she alone, by her care and 
loving watchfulness, saved and protected it from total 
extinction and destruction. Where was Protestantism 
when the Roman Emperor Diocletian issued a decree 
to burn the churches and destroy the copies of the 
Scriptures ? Where was Protestantism when the Huns, 
the Vandals, the Turks and Saracens invaded the 
Christian countries and threatened to wipe out every 
vestige of Christian culture and civilization? Protes- 
tantism began with Luther about the year 1520, some 
1200 years after the promulgation of Emperor 
Diocletian's decree. Had the Catholic Church not 
carefully guarded, transcribed and preserved copies of 
the Bible in the olden days, there would have been 
nothing left for Luther or any others to translate. 

The Catholic Church alone from the beginning de- 
fended the Blessed Word of her Divine Founder and 
her inspired writers. This fact is entirely ignored 
in the mendacious chatter of ranting spouters and 
ignorant writers whose tongues and pens are steeped 
in gall and vinegar when they deal w;ith matters Cath- 
olic. In spite of modern education and the findings 
of history, this particular class from bigoted motives 
continue to impose on their dupes and insist without 
warrant that the Church and her rulers made war, 
long and persistent, upon the Bible, and that, were 
it not for "the*Founder of Protestantism," the good 
Book would still be chained to church and monastery 
walls as directories are seen to-day in hotels and other 
public places. Of course, Martin Luther must be 
glorified for his supposed achievement. He translated^ 
the Bible or what pretended to be the Bible. His 
mutilation of the Holy Book and fhe amputation of 



198 The Facts About Luther 



several of its members make little or no difference to 
his admirers. It was a great work, one of the chief 
and most important labors of his life, and according 
to them deserves a distinguished place on the roll of 
immortal achievements. With this and similar inac- 
curacies and misstatements/ they forthwith hail him 
as "the hero of the Bible." The title pleases the mul- 
titude and fascinates all who are ignorant of the facts. 
It is amazing how easily most of the people are most 
of the time deceived. To tell these benighted souls 
that Luther was not "the hero of the Bible" would 
astonish, alarm and shock. The truth is, however, he 
has no claim to such honorable distinction, for, as 
every scholar knows, he docked and amended and 
added to the Bible, as he would, so that he made the 
Word of God become the word of man by making it 
the word of Dr. Luther. He sacrificed accuracy and 
mistranslated the Bible with deliberate purport and 
intention, in order to fit it to his false theories, and to 
.make it serve to buttress his heresies. His "evangelical 
preaching," denouncing the time-honored spiritual- 
order, abolition of ecclesiastical science and the re- 
jection of the sacraments, required a substitute for 
the "undefiled Word of God." He produced the needed 
substitute in his false and mutilated version, and for 
the sacrilegious achievement his followers call him a 
"hero." All the heroes of the Bible we know of were 
never guilty of the liberties he took w r ith the Word 
of God. They revered and respected every word and 
thought of the Bible. They neither took from nor 
added thereto — as was befitting God's message to man- 
kind. To call Luther's version, which is a monstrous 
forgery, the Word of God is nothing less than crim- 
inal and blasphemous. 

Luther began his version of the Scriptures in Ger- 
man during his residence at the Wartburg. He had 
>ust been ordered by Charles V., who saw it was 
impossible to convince him of his errors, to leave 
Worms under an imperial safeguard. After going 
some distance from Worms, the imperial protector 



Luther and the Bible 



199 



was dismissed and then, according to a previous ar- 
rangement, a party of friends, not a band of hostile 
armed men, as is ignorantly told, appeared upon the 
scene, took him from his wagon, mounted him on a 
horse and conducted him in the silence of the night 
to the ancient and historic castle of Wartburg. To 
ensure l^is incognito in this place selected for his 
retirement, he put aside his monk's habit, donned 
the dress of a country gentleman, allowed his hair 
and beard to grow and was introduced to those about 
not as Martin Luther, but as Squire George. This 
was the second time he changed his name. The first 
time as we have seen, 'was about 1512, long after he 
entered the University of Erfurt, where he was en- 
rolled among the students not as Luther but as Liider, 
by which name his family was known in the com- 
munity from time immemorial. The change was per- 
haps pardonable, for Liider has a vile signification, 
conveying the idea of "carrion," "beast," "low scoun- 
drel." The second assumed name, Squire George, 
was a decided improvement on Liider. 

The Castle of Wartburg, where Luther spent ten 
naonths in retirement, unknown except to some 
friends who were in the secret, was full of historic 
and inspiring memories. It was once the residence 
of the gentle and amiable St. Elizabeth and was on 
this account suggestive of the holiest recollections. To 
live within such precincts might be considered a privi- 
lege and one well calculated to stimulate to holiness 
and sanctity of behavior. The place, however, was 
little to the liking of the so-called "courageous apos- 
tle," who was designedly seized upon by pre-arrange- 
ment with the Elector of Saxony "and who was con- 
stantly protected by his friends whilst disguised as 
a country magnate under the assumed name of Squire 
George. He would have much preferred to be out in the 
open to continue his revolutionary movement publicly 
and among the masses, but his kitimates decreed he 
should remain in solitude in the hope that the storm 
which his wild teachings provoked might after a while 



200 The Facts About Luther 



blow over. His stay in the Wartburg from May, 1 521, to 
March, 1522, was, according to his own account, a time 
of idleness, despair and temptation. Remorse of con- 
science tormented him. "It is a dangerous thing," he says, 
"to change all spiritual and human order against com- 
mon sense." (De Wette 2.2 10 q.) On November 
25th, 1 52 1, he wrote to the Augustinians in Witten- 
berg: "With how much pain and labor did I scarcely 
justify my conscience that I alone should proceed 
against the Pope, hold him for Antichrist and the 
bishops for his apostles. How often did my heart 
punish me and reproach me with this strong argu-^ 
ment: 'Art thou alone wise?' Could all the others 
err and have erred for a long time? How if thou 
errest and leadest into error so many people who 
would all be damned forever?" (De Wette 2-107.) 
He often tried to rid himself of these anxieties, but 
they always returned. Even in his old age, a voice 
within, which he believed to be the voice of the devil, 
asked him if he were called to preach the Gospel in 
such a manner "as for many centuries no bishop or 
saint had dared to do." (Sammtliche Werke, 59, 286 : 
60. 6. 45.) Not only was he tormented by remorse 
of conscience in regard to his revolutionary work 
but he was sorely tried by the devil whom he thought 
he saw in every shape and form. Writing to his 
personal friend, Nicholas Gerbel, he says: "You can. 
believe that I am exposed to a thousand devils in this 
indolent place." He told another friend, Myconius, 
that in the Castle of Wartburg, "the devil in the form 
of a dog came twice to kill him." (Myconius, Hist. 
Reform. 42.) "Throughout life," Vedder remarks, 
"he was accustomed to refer whatever displeased or 
vexed him or seemed to hinder his work to the direct 
agency of the devil, in whom he believed with rather 
more energy than he believed in God. So now, in- 
stead of blaming his mode of life and changing it, he 
ascribes all his troubles to Satan. He even seems to 
have imagined that he had personal interviews with 
the devil." (Vedder p. 169.) From his hiding place 



Luther and the Bible 



201 



he writes to Melanchthon, w'ho of course was in the 
secret of his retreat, to inform him of his doings and 
says : "It is now eight days that I neither write any- 
thing nor pray, nor study, partly by reason of tempta- 
tions of the flesh, partly because vexed by other cares. 
I sit here in idleness and pray, alas! little, and sigh not 
for the Church of God. Much more am I consumed 
by the fires of my unbridled flesh. In a word, I who 
should burn of the spirit, am consumed by the flesh 
and by lasciviousness. ,, (De Wette, 2 : 22.) His was a 
most lamentable state whilst confined at the \yartburg. 
No wonder he produced a Bible full of malicious 
translations. A victim of fleshly lust and one in con- 
stant contact with Satan could hardly be expected to 
treat the undefiled Word of God with reverence. What 
reliance can be placed in a translation of the Bible 
made under such unfavorable circumstances? 

Luther, in a letter to his friend Lange, dated Decem- 
ber 18, 1521, announces his intention to translate the 
New Testament into German. On March 30, 1522, 
he writes to Spalatin, another friend, to tell that he 
has completed the work and placed it in the care of 
a few intimates for inspection. This leaves little more 
than ten weeks for the completion of what he hoped 
would "prove a worthy work." After some revision, 
the translation was ready for the press and given to 
the public September 22, 1522. The whole work was 
done in great haste and as might be expected suf- 
fered in consequence. The faults and imperfections 
everywhere in evidence are numerous and unpardon- 
able. The rapidity with which the work was pro- 
duced by both author and publisher borders on the 
marvelous. "It would be difficult,", observes Vedder, 
"to believe that a complete translation would have 
been made by a man of Luther's limited attainments 
in Greek and with the imperfect apparatus that he 
possessed in the short space of ten weeks. . . .Any 
minister to-day who has had the Greek course of a 
college and seminary, is a far better scholar than 
Luther. Let such a man, if he thinks Luther's achieve- 



202 



The Facts About Luther 



ment possible, attempt the accurate translation of a 
single chapter of the New Testament — such a trans- 
lation as he would be willing to print under his own 
name — and multiply the time consumed by the two 
hundred and sixty pages. He will be speedily con- 
vinced that the feat attributed to Luther is an impos- 
sible one. What then? Is the whole story false? 
That too is impossible — the main facts are too well 
attested. The solution of an apparently insoluble con- 
tradiction is a very simple one : Luther did not make 
an independent translation: he never claimed that he, 
did: none of his contemporaries made the claim for 
him. It is only his later admirers who have made this 
statement to enhance his glory, just as they have 
unduly exaggerated for the same purpose the paucity 
of the Scriptures and the popular ignorance of them 
before Luther's day. We now know that both these 
assertions are untrue to historic fact and have mis- 
led many unwary persons into inferences far indeed 
from the truth. The two assertions are so intimately 
connected that in showing either to be unfounded 
the other is also and necessarily controverted." (Ved- 
der, p. 170.) 

The same Protestant Professor tells us that "the 
version, Codex Teplensis, was certainly in the pos- 
session of Luther and was as certainly used by him 
in the preparation of his translation. This fact, once 
entirely unsuspected and then hotly denied, has been 
proved 'by the 'deadly parallel.' It appears by a verse 
by verse comparison that this old German Bible was 
in fact so industriously used by Luther, that the 
only accurate description of Luther's version is to 
call it a careful revision of the older text. . . .He had 
a better text than had been available to former trans- 
lators The old German Bible had been translated 

from the Vulgate and had followed it slavishly. Luther 
proposed to use the original Greek and Hebrew Scrip- 
tures as the basis of his work. For the New Testa- 
ment he had the second Basel edition, 15 19, of Eras- 
mus, in which many of the misprints of the first edi- 



Luther and the Bible 



203 



tion had been corrected. He did not fail to consult 
the Vulgate and sometimes followed that version, 
which in some passages was made from an older text 
than that of Erasmus." 

When Luther finished the translation of the New 
Testament, he, with the assistance of many friends 
such as Melanchthon, Spalatin, Sturtz, Brugenhagen, 
Cruciger, Justin Jonas and others, undertook the com- 
pletion of the entire Bible, which was published in 
German in 1534. This work, which occupied so many 
years, was not entirely to his liking. It needed to be 
altered still more and fitted more exactly to suit his 
new teachings and more especially his main doctrine, 
that nothing could be required to be believed that 
is not explicitly laid down in the Bible. It never 
occurred to him that this much cherished dogma, if 
accepted, must be rejected, for it is not itself ex- 
plicitly laid down anywhere in the Bible. This incon- 
sistency did not, however, trouble him. Intent only 
on urging his false views, he never stopped in his 
work but went on changing and altering the orig- 
inal translation until his death. No fewer than five 
editions of the complete work were issued during his 
lifetime. After 1545, when the final text was pub- 
lished, numerous unauthorized reprints, abounding in 
more changes, were given to the public, so that, as 
Vedder says, "a critical recension finally became nec- 
essary. This was accomplished about 1700 by the 
Canstein Bible Institute, and that edition became the 
textus receptus of the German Bible, until its recent 
revision by a committee of distinguished German 
scholars. This revision is now published at the Francke 
Orphanage, Halle, and is rapidly superseding the orig- 
inal 'Luther Bible/ " We wonder were poor Luther 
alive to-day what epithet the master of vituperation 
would fling at the "distinguished German scholars'* 
who had the boldness to give their revision and not 
his Bible to the world. 

Luther's translation was genuinely German in style 
and spirit. He wanted to make it thoroughly German 



204 The Facts About Luther 



and to make the sacred authors read as though they 
had been written in German. In this he had no little 
difficulty. "Great God," he writes, "what a labor to 
employ force to make the Hebrew poets express them- 
selves in German." To attain his end he often sacri- 
ficed accuracy and "allowed himself," as McGiffert 
says, "many liberties with the text, to the great scan- 
dal of his critics." He boasted that his version was 
better as a translation than the Vulgate or SeptuagirrL 
The earlier translations were faithful to a nicety and 
much more literally correct, but their German, being 
in a formative state, was harsh and crude and occa- 
sionally somewhat obscure." At that time dialects 
were many and various, so that people living only a 
short distance apart could scarcely understand one 
another. Though Luther did not create the German 
language he labored in conjunction with the Saxon 
Chancery to reform, modify, and enrich it His efforts 
were not without results. He had a large, full 
and flexible vocabulary which he used with force in 
his translation, where is displayed the whole wealth, 
power and beauty of the German language. He wished 
to make his Bible really a German book and under- 
stood by all alike. He did not want the people, as 
he said, "to get their German from the Latin as these 
asses," alluding to his predecessors, "do." He gave 
them German, simple/ idiomatic, racy, colloquial, clas- 
sical, and as his Bible sold for a trifle, it was pur- 
chased by many, read widely and exercised a decided 
influence in giving the whole country a common 
tongue. We cannot deny that his translation sur- 
passes those which had £>een published before him ia 
the perfection of language, but while we admit this, 
we cannot but regret that he failed with all his beauty 
of diction to give what his predecessors valued more 
than all else, a correct, faithful and true rendition of 
"the undefiled Word of God." His work is praised 
as the first classic of German literature, but the dis- 
tinction can never blind the scholar to its many and 
serious imperfections and faults and its arbitrary addi- 



Luther and the Bible 



205 



tions and changes maliciously introduced to favor his 
individual and fanciful teachings as against those of 
the Church sacredly held and constantly adhered to 
from the beginning of Christianity. 

Jerome Emser, a- learned doctor of Leipsic, made 
a critical, examination of Luther's translation when 
it first appeared and detected no less than a thousand 
glaring faults. He was the first who undertook to 
show the falseness of the translation and to correct 
its errors; he published a very faithful version, in 
which all the passages that had been falsified in the 
other may be easily seen. Luther did not like this 
exposure of his work by his learned antagonist and 
the only reply he made was to launch out his usual 
volley of insulting and abusive epithets. "These popish 
asses/' said he, "are not able to appreciate my labors." 
(Sackendorf, Comm. L. I. sect. 52.) Yet even Sacken- 
dorf gives us to understand that, in his cooler mo- 
ments, the reformer availed himself of Emser's correc- 
tions and made many further changes in his version. 

Martin Bucer, a brother Reformer, says that Luther's 
"falls in translating and explaining the Scriptures 
were manifest and not a few." (Bucer, Dial, contra 
Melanchthon.) Zwingle, another leading Reformer, 
after examining his translation, openly pronounced it 
"a corruption of the Word of God." (Amicable Dis- 
cussion, Trevern, 1/129 — note.) Hallam says: "The 
translation of the Old and the New Testament by 
Luther is more renowned for the purity of its Ger- 
man idiom than for its adherence to the original text. 
Simon has charged him with ignorance of Hebrew; 
and when we consider how late he came to the knowl- 
edge of that or the Greek language, it may be believed 
that his acquaintance with them was far from exten- 
sive." (Hallam, Historical Literature 1. 201.) "It 
has been as ill-spoken of among Calvinists as by the 
Catholics themselves" (Note ibid). It is now, as might 
be expected, grown almost obsolete, even in Germany 
itself. It is viewed as faulty and insufficient in many 



206 The Facts About Luther 



respects. In 1836, many Lutheran consistories called 
for its entire revision. 

The errors in Luther's version were not those of 
ignorance, but were a wilful perversion of the Scrip- 
tures to suit his own views. A .few examples will 
suffice to prove our contention. In St. Matthew III, 
2, he renders the word, "repent, or do penance/' by 
the expression "mend, or do better.'' 

Acts XIX, 18, "Many of them that believed came 
confessing and declaring their deeds." Lest this 
should confirm the practice of confession, he refers the 
deeds to the apostles, and renders "they acknowledge 
the miracles of .the apostles." These errors were after- 
wards corrected by his followers. The expression "full 
of grace" in the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin, 
he renders "Thou gracious one." Romans IV, 15 ; "the 
law worketh wrath," he translates, "the law worketh 
only wrath," thus adding a word to the text and chang- 
ing its sense. 

Romans III, 28, "We account a man to be justified 
by faith without the works of the law" he renders by 
the interpolating of a word, "We hold that a man is 
justified without works of the law by faith alone. 3 ' 
His answer to Emser's exposition of his perversion 
of the text was : "If your Papist annoys you with the 
word {alone), tell him straightway: Dr. Martin 
Luther w r ill have it so : Papist and ass are one and 
the same thing. Whoever will not have my trans- 
lation, let him give it the go-by : the devil's thanks to 
him who censures it without my will and knowledge. 
Luther will have it so and he is a doctor above all 
the doctors in Popedom." (Amic. Discussion 1, 127.) 
Thus Luther defends his perversion of Scripture and 
makes hknself the supreme judge of the Bible. His 
work, faulty and erroneous, places the true Lutheran 
in a serious dilemma. He needs the Bible for his sal- 
vation and yet he cannot be sure that Luther has 
given him a version possessing any binding force. 

Luther translated and altered the Sacred Word by 
the freedom of his opinions. His irreverent work 



Luther and the Bible 



207 



did not stop here. As he rejected the authority of 
the teaching Church, he had no guide but his own 
whim and took upon himself to expunge from the 
canon of Inspired Writings those of the Old Testa- 
ment, known as deuterocanonical books, although they 
had always been received by the Oriental churches 
and especially by those who occupied the Holy Land, 
and who, consequently, had preserved the books con- 
tinuously. In his prefaces to these books he gives 
at length his opinion as to their character and author- 
ity. The result was that they were published as 
"Apocrypha," or books profitable for pious reading, 
but no part of the Sacred Text, because not inspired by 
the Holy Ghost. The catalogue in the edition of 1534 
gives as "Apocrypha," Judith, Wisdom, Tobias, 
Ecelesiasticus, the two books of Maccabees, parts of 
Esther, parts of Daniel and the prayer of Manasses. 

But even for the books he chose to retain, he showed 
little or no respect. Here are some examples of 
his judgments on them. Of the Pentateuch he says : 
"We have no wish either to see or hear Moses." 
"Judith is a good, serious, brave tragedy." "Tobias 
is an elegant, pleasing, godly comedy." "Ecelesias- 
ticus is a profitable book for an ordinary man." "Of 
very little worth is the book of Baruch, whoever the 
worthy Baruch may be." "Esdras I would not trans- 
late, because there is nothing in it which you might 
not find better in Aesop." "Job spoke not as it stands 
written in his book; but only had such thoughts. It 
is merely the argument of a fable. It is probable 
that Solomon wrote and made this book." "The book 
entitled 'Ecclesiastes' ought to have been more com- 
plete. There is too much incoherent matter in it. It 
has neither boots nor spurs; but rides only in socks 
as I myself did when an inmate of the cloister. Solo- 
mon did not, therefore, write this book, which was 
made in the days of the Maccabees of Sirach. It is 
like a Talmud, compiled from many books, perhaps 
in Egypt at the desire of King Evergetes." "The 
book of Esther I toss into the Elbe. I am such an 



208 The Facts About Luther 



enemy to the book of Esther that I wish it did not 
exist, for it Judaizes too much and has in it a great 
deal of heathenish naughtiness." "The history of 
Jonah is so monstrous that it is absolutely incredible." 
"The first book of the Maccabees might have been 
taken into the Scriptures, but the second is rightly 
cast out, though there is some good in it." 

The books of the New Testament fare4 no better. 
He rejected from the Canon the Epistle to the He- 
brews, the Epistle of St. James, the Epistle of St. 
Jude and the Apocalypse. These he placed at the 
end of his translation, after the others which he called 
"the true and certain capital books of the New Testa- 
ment." He says: "The first three (Gospels) speak 
of the works of Our Lord rather than of his oral 
teachings : that of St. John is the only sympathetic, 
the only true Gospel and should be undoubtedly pre- 
ferred to the others. In like manner the Epistles of 
St. Peter and St. Paul are superior to the first three 
Gospels." The Epistle to the Hebrews did not suit 
him. "It need not surprise one to find here," he 
says, "bits of wood, hay and straw." The Epistle 
of St. James, Luther denounced .as "an epistle of 
straw." "I do not hold it," he said, "to be his writ- 
ing, and I cannot place it among the capital books." 
He did this because it proclaimed the necessity of 
good works contrary to his heresy. "There are many 
things objectionable in this book," he says of the 
Apocalypse; "to my mind it bears upon it no marks 
of an apostolic or prophetic character. . . .Every one 
may form his own judgment of this book; as for 
myself, I feel an aversion to it, and to me this is 
sufficient reason for rejecting it." (Sammtliche 
Werke, 63, 169-170.) At the present day and for a 
long time previously, the Lutherans, ashamed of these 
excesses, have replaced the two Epistles and the 
Apocalypse in the Canon of the Sacred Scriptures. 

Luther declared time and again that he looked upon 
the Bible "as if God himself spoke therein." "Yet," 
as Gigot says, "inconsistently with this statement, he 



Luther and the Bible 



209 



freely charges the sacred writers with inaccurate state- 
ments, unsound reasonings, the use of imperfect mate- 
rials and even urges the authority of Christ against 
that of Holy Writ." In a word, as is admitted by a 
recent Protestant writer: "Luther has no fixed theory 
of inspiration: if all his works suppose the inspira- 
tion of the Sacred W ritings, all his conduct shows that 
he makes himself the supreme judge of it." (Rabaud, 
p. 42.) His pride was intense. He conceived him- 
self directly illuminated by the Holy Ghost and second 
only to the Godhead. In this spirit of arrogance 
and balspheny, he did as he willed with the Sacred 
Volume, which had been handed dowli through the 
centuries in integrity, truth, and authority. The old 
and accepted Bible he knew in his professorial days 
was an awkward book for him, when in the period 
of his religious vertigo he rebelled against the Church 
which had preserved, guarded and protected it during 
the previous fifteen hundred years. It went straight 
against his heresies and he would not have it as it 
had been handed down in integrity and complete- 
ness. He twisted, distorted, and mutilated it. He 
changed it, added to and took from it, to make it fit 
his newly found teaching. He feels abundantly com- 
petent, by his own interior and spiritual instinct, to 
pronounce dogmatically which books in the Canon 
of Scripture are inspired and which are not. Nothing 
embarrasses him. To make his Testament more Luth- 
eran, though less Scriptural, was his object. Reverent 
scholars decried his arbitrary handling of the Sacred 
Volume. He, however, cared little for their protests. 
In his usual characteristic raving, he cries out: — 
"Papists and asses are synonymous terms. ,, ...He 
will have his changes in the sacred text right or wrong. 
"Here one must yield not a nail's breadth to any, 
neither to the angels of Heaven, nor to the gates of 
Hell, nor to St. Paul, nor to a hundred Emperors, nor 
to a thousand Popes, nor to the whole world ; and this 
be my watchword and sign : — tessera et symbolum." 
The Inspired Word of God was nothing to Luther 



210 



The Facts About Luther 



when it could not be made to square with Lutheran- 
ism. He is prepared to assume the whole responsi- 
bility for the changes he made and believes he has the 
faculty of judging the Bible without danger of error. 
He believes he is infallible. "My word," says he, in 
an exhortation to his followers, "is the word of Christ: 
my mouth is the mouth of Christ." And to prove this, 
he indulges in a prophecy: he proclaims that "if his 
Gospel is preached but for two years, then Pope, 
bishops, cardinals, priests, monks, nuns, bells, bell- 
towers, masses — rules, statues and all the vermin and 
riff-raff of the Papal government, will have vanished 
like smoke." Luther with all this flourish of trum- 
pets proved himself a false prophet. The Church 
that he thought would "vanish like smoke" is still in 
existence and now as ever cries out in the words of 
her Founder: "There will rise up false Christs and 
false prophets and they shall show signs and won- 
ders to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect 
Take ye heed, therefore : behold I have foretold you 
all things." St. Mark XIII, 22, 23. 

Not only did Luther knowingly make additions to 
the text and expunge from the Canon some of the 
Inspired Books, but, he distorted the meaning of 
several passages by interpretations that were erroneous 
and nothing short of blasphemous. He even went so 
far as to accuse the Divine Author of playful men- 
dacity, of irony, when no other sense of the Inspired 
Words would suit the Lutheran cause. "This cham- 
pion of free inquiry," says Alzog, the historian, "was 
obliged to go whither the logical deductions of 
his system w r ould lead him: and he did not halt at 
difficulties. There were Scripture texts plainly 
against his theory of the inherent slavery of the human 
will : but even these he set aside by an ipse dixit, dis- 
torting them from their natural sense and obvious 
meaning, by blasphemously asserting that God in 
inspiring the passages in question, was playfully men- 
dacious, secretly meaning just the reverse of what He 
openly revealed; and that the Apostles, when speak- 



Luther and the Bible 



211 



ing of the human will and actions, gave way to an 
impulse of unseemly levity and used words in an 
ironical sense." (Alzog. Vol. Ill, p. 227.) 

"To do," said Luther, "means to believe — to keep the 
law by faith. The passage in Matthew : Do this and 
thou shalt live, signifies Believe this and thou shalt 
live. The words, Do this have an ironical sense, as 
if our Lord should say : Thou wilt do it to-morrow, 
but not to-day ; only make an attempt to keep the com- 
mandments, and the trial will teach thee the ignominy 
of thy failure." 

This illustration, one out of many, shows Luther's 
unscrupulous method of distorting the plain and evi- 
dent meaning of the Inspired Word of God. What 
he did with this text, he did with hundreds of others. 
In the most reckless and unblushing manner this self- 
appointed expositor twisted backwards and forwards 
the Sacred Word at will to force it to conform to his 
special whims and fancies. When he had shorn the 
Bible of its proportions and changed it in the direction 
of his new religious theories, he had the daring and 
boldness to call his work the work of God. Like all 
other heretics he made himself an infallible authority, 
and as such insisted that his special version be re- 
ceived as the work of God. He knew full well that 
he had mutilated, distorted, and perverted the Bible, 
but what cared he when, in his folly, he wanted his 
word to be taken for the Word of God. His new re- 
ligious system was formulated and based exclusively 
on the Scriptures, not however on the Scriptures 
known to the world for so many centuries before, but 
the Scriptures as translated, interpreted and under- 
stood by the "Founder of Lutheranism." 

This travesty of the Divine Revelation, falsified in 
most of its lines and stripped of its Divine character, 
he gave to the people on his own authority to be 
henceforward their sole means of salvation and their 
guide in judging for themselves in all matters of faith. 
To spite the authority of the Church and advance 
his destructive theories, he constituted everybody, man 



212 The Facts About Luther 

or woman, young or old, learned or unlearned, wise 
or foolish, absolute judges of the meaning of the 
Bible. This arbitrary act pleased the unthinking mul- 
titudes, who now with lamentable folly began like him- 
self to reject the authority of the Church established 
by God and to substitute therefor the authority of 
man, human, fallible, blasphemous and bent on the 
destruction of the Christian Creed and of Divine faith. 
Through the fluctuations of passion and the incon- 
sistencies of the human intellect, divisions and parties 
and sects began to abound on all sides as a result of 
widely different interpretations until the Inspired 
Word of God, made the text-book of party strife, lost 
all its Divine character and sank to the level of the 
human mind. 

The work begun by Luther was followed up with 
ardor by those whom he led into rebellion against the 
Church. Beza, Zwingle, Calvin and a host of other 
malcontents claimed the same power and authority 
as Luther, to be supreme judges of the interpretation 
and meaning of the Scriptures. In their hands the 
Bible, without note or comment, without an infallible 
voice to which men may listen, became the fruitful 
source of disunion, the foundation of enormous and 
conflicting errors, and the destroyer one by one of 
nearly all the principal truths of revealed religion. It 
is really painful to read the lamentations of the Protes- 
tant writers of those days over the utter and inextri- 
cable confusion in which nearly every doctrinal sub- 
ject had been involved by the disputes and conten- 
tions consequent upon the introduction of the indi- 
vidual interpretation of the Bible. "So great" writes 
the learned Christopher Fischer, superintendent of 
Smalkald, "are the corruptions, falsifications and scan- 
dalous contentions, which, like a fearful deluge, over- 
spread the land, and afflict, disturb, mislead and per- 
plex poor, simple, common *men not deeply read in 
Scriptures, that one is completely bewildered as to 
what side is right and to which he should give his 
adhesion." An equally unimpeachable witness of the 



Luther and the Bible 



213 



same period admits that "so great, on the part of 
most people, is the contempt of religion, the neglect 
of piety and the trampling down of virtue, that they 
would seem , not to be Christians, nothing but down- 
right savage barbarians." 

Luther sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. 
He saw the miseries of the distracted Reformation he 
brought into life and was plunged into the deepest 
despair. Losing all control of himself, he would at 
times berate with- severest, even unbecoming language,, 
all who dared to put into practice the principle of 
private judgment. In one of his frequent exhibitions of 
temper he cried out : "How many doctors have I macie 
by preaching and writing ! Now they say, Be off with 
you. Go off with you. Go to the devil. Thus it must 
be. When we preach they laugh. . . . When we get angry 
and threaten them, they mock us, snap their fingers at 
us and laugh in their sleeves." (Walch VII. 2310.) 
What other treatment could he expect ? He taught them 
to decide for themselves the meaning of the Bible, and 
as his teaching led to the creation of as many creeds 
as there were individuals, he had none to blame but 
himself. According to his own principle the opinions 
of any of the rabble were as good as his in finding 
out their faith and in the interpretation of the Scrip- 
ture. When he did away with Divine authority and 
rejected a Divine witness in dealing with the Bible, 
it ill became him to lecture his own* children for imitat- 
ing his example. 

"There is no smearer," he said, "but when he has 
heard a sermon or can read a chapter in German, 
makes a doctor of himself and crowns his ass and 
convinces himself that he knows everything better than 
all who teach him." (Walch V. 1652.) "When we 
have heard or learned a few things about Holy Scrip- 
ture, we think we are already doctors and have swal- 
lowed the Holy Ghost, feathers and all." (Walch V. 
472.) Mark how this erratic man speaks of the third 
person of the Blessed and Adorable Trinity. Will the 
Bible Christian approve the blasphemous language? 



214 The Facts About Luther 



Does this show his mouth was the mouth of Christ? 
We will not wait for an answer as we would learn 
more from Luther concerning the failure of his cher- 
ished teaching. 'This one/' he says, "will not hear 
of baptism, that One denies the sacrament, another puts 
a world between this and the last day: some teach 
that Christ is not God, some say this, some say that: 
there are about as many sects and creeds as there are 
heads. No yokel is so rude, but when he has dreams 
and fancies, he thinks himself inspired by the Holy 
Ghost and must be a prophet/' (De Wette III, 61.) 
Seeing his power and authority to control the masses 
gone, he now in a spirit of disappointment sarcas- 
tically remarks : "Noblemen, townsmen, peasants, all 
classes understand the Evangelium better than I or St. 
Paul; they are now wise and think themselves more 
learned than all the ministers/' (Walch XIV, 1360.) 
Thus Luther himself testifies to the utfeer failure of 
the cardinal principle of his so-called Reformation. 

As early as 1523, when Carl von Bodmanri heard 
that Luther declared the Bible's authority is to be 
recognized as far only as it agrees with one's "spirit," 
he asked the very pertinent question : "What will be 
the consequences of the Reformer's principle about 
the interpretation and value of the Sacred Scriptures ? 
He rejects this book and that as not apostolic, as 
spurious, because it does not agree with his spirit. 
Other people will reject other books for the same rea- 
sons and finally they will not believe in the Bible at 
all and will treat like any profane book." 

Von Bodmann's words seemed to have in them the 
ring of prophecy. The outlook for the honor, dig- 
nity and authority of the Bible among the followers 
of the Reformer was indeed gloomy. Luther saw the 
injurious results of his principle of private interpreta- 
tion. Depressed by the thoughts of what the future 
-would unfold, he said to Melanchthon one day whilst 
at table: "There will be the greatest confusion. 
Nobody will allow himself to be led by another man's 
doctrine or authority. Everybody will be his own 



Luther and the Bible 



215 



rabbi: hence the greatest scandals." (Lauterb. 91.) 
Just so. He opened the floodgates of infidelity and 
nothing but ruin and disaster to countless souls might 
be expected in consequence. 

Luther's system contained in itself the germs of 
infidelity and paved the way for the Rationalists who 
in Germany, hardly surpass their master. Every one: 
knows what the general influence of the Reformation 
on Biblical studies in Germany ha?s been. The Ration- 
alism which it generated prevails still to an alarm- 
ing extent throughout almost the whole of the first 
theatre of Protestantism and is daily working havoc 
amongst all classes. "This system/' as Spalding 
says, "which is little better than downright Deism, 
has frittered away the very substance of Christianity. 
The inspiration of the Bible itself, the integrity of 
its canon, the truth of its numerous and clearly attested 
miracles, the Divinity and even the resurrection of 
Christ and the existence of grace, and everything 
supernatural in religion have all fallen before the 
Juggernaut-car like of modern German Protestant 
exegesis or system of interpretation. The Rational- 
ists of Germany have left nothing of Christianity v 
scarcely even its lifeless skeleton. They boldly and 
unblushingly proclaim their infidel principles through 
the press, from the professor's chair and from the 
pulpit. And the most learned and distinguished among 
the present German Protestant clergy have openly em- 
braced this infidel system. Whoever doubts the en- 
tire accuracy of this picture of modern German Prot- 
estantism, needs only open the works of Semmler, 
Damon, Paulus, Strauss, Eichorn, Michaelis, Teuer- 
bach, Bretschneider, Woltman, and others." 

The following extract from the sermons of the Rev. 
Dr. Rose, a learned divine of the Church of England, 
presents a graphic sketch of these German Rational- 
ists : "They are bound by no law, but their own fancies ; 
some are more and some are less extravagant; but I 
do them no injustice after this declaration in saying, 
that the general inclination and tendency of their 



216 The Facts About Luther 



opinions (more or less forcibly acted on) is this: That 
in th£ New Testament, we shall find only the opinions 
of Christ and the Apostles adapted to the age in which 
they livved, and not eternal truths: that Christ Him- 
self had neither the design nor the power of teach- 
ing any system which was to endure; that when He 
taught any enduring truth, as He occasionally did, it 
was without being aware of its mature ; that the Apos- 
tles understood still less of real religion; that the 
whole doctrine both of Christ and the Apostles, as it 
was directed to the Jews alone, so it was gathered 
from no other source than the Jewish philosophy ; that 
Christ Himself erred ( !) and His Apostles spread His 
errors, and that consequently not one of His doctrines 
is to be received on their authority; but that, with- 
out regard to the authority of the books of Scripture 
and their asserted Divine origin, each doctrine is to 
be examined according to the principles of right reason, 
before it is allowed to be Divine." 

Since these words were written some forty or more 
years ago the Higher Critics have multiplied to an 
alarming extent and the boldness of the extravagancies 
in which they constantly indulge in regard to the treat- 
ment of the Inspired Word is a scandal to all lovers 
of the Bible. -The Scriptures in their estimation are 
no more sacred than any other writings. They not 
only subject them to the most unreasoning criticism 
but strive by every means known to erratic and un- 
scientific minds to question their inspiration, under- 
mine their authority and underestimate their saving 
teachings. Too proud to "stand in the old paths" des- 
ignated by Mother Church, they take to the "new one 
struck out by Luther" and with private judgment for 
guide and under the guise of liberty of thought, they 
attack the "open Bible," now exposed to the vagaries, 
passions and humors of individual readers, and not 
only abuse but despoil and strip it of its ancien* beauty, 
sacredness and authority. How could an "open Bible," 
with a perception of it hermetically sealed, and an 
erring "private judgment" meet with ottter than de- 



Luther and the Bible 



struction and lead to "perdition ?" as St. Peter de- 
clares. From a book of life, they make it a book 
of death. They vaunt their zeal for it only to compass 
in its rejection. 

As we recall the extraordinary and almost incredi- 
ble developments of the principle of private judgment, 
which supp9rts a hundred contradictory systems of 
religion, we are forcibly reminded of what St. Paul 
writes of the ancient philosophers, that they "became 
vain in their thoughts" and "thinking themselves wise 
became fools." The sad aberrations of the so-called 
learned bibliomaniacs of the various countries fur- 
nish palpable evidence of the necessity of a Divinely 
appointed guide in religious matters. 

The Bible manifestly contains and teaches but one 
religion. Truth is but one. There is but one revela- 
tion and, therefore, but one true interpretation of that 
volume which is its record. The Catholic Church, 
which existed before the Bible, which made the Bible, 
which selected the books and settled and closed the 
Canon of Holy Scriptures, has alone in her posses- 
sion the key to the true meaning of the Sacred Oracles: 
of which she was the guardian in all ages and under 
all circumstances. The same Holy Spirit which 

. founded the Church and inspired the Scriptures, made 
her the authorized interpreter of the Divine Word 
and the same Holy Spirit, as He promised, has ever 
abided in her to guard and protect from all possi- 
bility of error in penetrating and expounding the book 
of life and salvation. God could not do less than safe- 
guard His work. He would not have His children 
"tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind 
of doctrine, in the wickedness of men, in craftiness,, 
by which they lie in wait to deceive." Ephes. IV., 14. 
God therefore established the Church to be a wit- 
ness to His revelation. He made her the external and 
infallible authority to declare that the Bible is His 

- Word and is inspired by Him. With the Church 
the Bible is a book of life. Her infallible interpreta- 
tion guarantees unhesitating certainty in all matters 



218 



The Facts About Luther 



of faith and morals, that peace and not dissension, 
certainty and not confusion, unity and not division may 
prevail amongst men of good will. Without this 
Church there is no witness to the revelation or re- 
demption of Christ and no other Divinely constituted 
teacher of the Word of God. 

To-day there are outside the Catholic Church num- 
bers of good, plain, intelligent men who love Divine 
truth and are anxious to know it as it was announced 
in the beginning by the Master in all fullness and 
perfection. They love the Bible, but have grown tired 
of being tossed about by every wind of doctrine as 
set in motion by any new fledged divine with a 
superficial education who imagines that he has re- 
ceived a call from heaven to inaugurate a new re- 
ligion. They know that in the Scriptures there "are 
some things hard to understand," "that many wrest 
them to their own perdition" and that they do not 
contain all the truths necessary for salvation. They 
feel that the Scriptures alone cannot be a sufficient 
guide and rule of faith, because they cannot, at any 
time, be within the reach of every inquirer. They 
know it is impossible for any one to learn his faith 
from the Bible alone. The feeling grows on them 
that their edition of the Bible has been mutilated, that 
it has been tampered with, that it has rejected what 
the Holy Ghost has dictated, that it has deliberately 
cut out what God had put in. Then they recall the 
solemn warning contained in the closing words of the 
Apocalypse: "If any man shall take away from the 
words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take 
away his part out of the book of life and out of the 
Holy City and from these things that are written in 
this book." The arbitrary act of the reformers in 
changing the Word of God fills them, as well it might, 
with horror and distrust. They must not, however, be 
discouraged. They must learn to put aside their old 
time prejudices aiid arouse their perceptions to see that 
what they call "the Church of Rome," which they 
were taught hated the Bible, is indeed the Church of 



Luther and the Bible 



219 



Jesus of Nazareth and holds sacred and uncorrupted 
every verse of the Gospel. They must be taught that 
all who would know God, and who would learn what 
God is, in all His beauty and His truth, must know 
Him in His Incarnate Son and humbly follow the 
solemn command "to hear the Church/' which He 
made "the pillar and ground of truth/' under the awful 
penalty of being reckoned "with heathens and pub-^ 
licans." 

Once this Voice is recognized, as right reason and 
faith demand, men of good-will, earnest and sincere, 
will become filled with the sure knowledge of God and 
His revelation, as it is in Christ and His Church, and 
peace shall possess their souls. They will return to 
the Church of their fathers whence they were beguiled 
by the false teachings of unscrupulous and crafty men, 
and discover that whilst she fearlessly leaves the 
whole Scriptures as they were given her in the begin- 
ning in their original, untouched majesty, yet she 
pours upon them a full stream of light which draws 
out into life and beauty and salvation t-heir minutest 
shades of meaning — a light which they have sought in 
vain to draw from Luther and his erroneous prin- 
ciples of Biblical interpretation. 



CHAPTER VII. 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 

LUTHER was a regularly ordained priest of the 
Catholic Church and "his lips", according to Holy 
Writ, should "keep knowledge" for all who would "seek 
the law at his mouth ; because he is the angel of the Lord 
of Hosts." In assuming the sacred office of the priest- 
hood, his mission was not only to the religious, but to 
the social order, for both are from God their Founder. 
Like all priests before and after his time, he understood 
that his duty was not only to acquire, but to keep that 
knowledge which was necessary for all who sought the 
law at his mouth in order to teach the things men 
should render to God and the things they should render 
to Caesar. The mission of the priest, as the keeper and 
expositor of Divine knowledge and heavenly truth, is 
not merely to the individual, but to the nation in 
its corporate capacity. This was manifestly the will 
and the design of Christ when He commissioned His 
Apostles "to go and teach the nations all things whatso- 
ever He had commanded." This Gospel embodies all 
knowledge and all truth, and its message, which is one 
of peace and good will, is intended to promote among 
the peoples the blessings of tranquility, good feeling 
and fraternal union. 

"Anointed," as Luther was, "to preach the Gospel 
of peace," and commissioned to communicate to all the 
knowledge which uplifts, sanctifies and saves, it is 
certainly pertinent to ask what was his attitude to the 
ministry of the Divine word, and in what manner did 
he show by speech and behavior the heavenly sanc- 
tions of law, Divine, international and social ? 

As we draw near this maa and carefully examine 
his career we find that in an evil moment he abandoned 
the spirit of discipline, became a pursuer of novelty, 
and put on the ways and the manners of the "wolf in 
sheep's clothing" whose teeth and claws rent asunder 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 221 

the seamless garment of Divine knowledge which 
should have been kept whole for the instruction and the 
comfort of all who were to seek the law at his lips. 
His words lost their savor and influence for good, and 
only foulness and mocking blasphemy filled his mouth, 
to deceive the ignorant and lead them into error, license 
and rebellion against both Church and State. Out of 
the abundance of a corrupt heart this fallen priest, who 
had departed from the Divine source of that knowledge 
which is unto peace, shamelessly advanced theories and 
principles which cut at the root of all order, authority 
and obedience, and inaugurated an antogonism and a 
disregard for the sanctity of law such as the world 
had not known since pagan times. His Gospel was 
not that of the Apostles who issued from the upper 
room of Jerusalem in the power of those "parted 
tongues, as it were of fire." His doctrine stript of its 
cunning and deceit, was nothing else, to use the words 
of St. James describing false teaching, but "earthly, 
sensual, devilish" ; so much so, that men of good sense 
could no longer safely "seek the law at his mouth" 
and honestly recognize him as "the angel of the Lord 
of Hosts" sent with instructions for the good of the 
flock and the peace of the nations. Opposed to all 
law, order, and restraint he could not but disgrace his 
ministry, proclaim his own shame, and prove to every 
wise and discerning follower of the true Gospel of 
peace, the groundlessness of his boastful claims to be 
in any proper sense a benefactor of society, an up- 
holder of constituted authority and a promoter of the 
best interests of humanity. 

Luther, like many another framer of religious and 
political heresy, may have begun his course blindly 
and with little serious reflection. He may have never 
stopped to estimate the lamentable and disastrous 
results to which his heretofore unheard-of propaganda 
would inevitably lead. He may not have directly 
intended the ruin, desolation and misery which his 
seditious preaching effected in all directions. "But," 
as Verres aptly says, "if a man standing on one of the 
snow capped giants of the Alps were to roll down a 



222 



The Facts About Luther 



little stone, knowing what consequences would follow, 
he would be answerable for the desolation caused by 
the avalanche in the valley below. Luther put into 
motion not one little stone, but rock after rock, and he 
must have been shortsighted indeed or his blind hatred 
made him so, if he was unable to estimate beforehand 
what effect his inflammatory appeals to the masses of 
the people and his wild denunciations of law and order 
would have." He should, as a matter of course, have 
weighed well and thoroughly the merits or demerits of 
his "new gospel" before he announced it to an undis- 
criminating public, and wittingly or unwittingly un- 
barred the floodgates of confusion and unrest. Deliber- 
ation., however, was a process little known to this man 
of many moods and violent temper. To secure victory 
in his quarrel with the Church absorbed his attention 
to the exclusion of all else, and, although he may not 
have reflected in time on the effects of his revolutionary 
teachings he is none the less largely responsible for the 
religious, political and social upheaval of his day, 
which his wild and passionate harangues fomented 
and precipitated. Nothing short of a miracle could 
prevent his reckless, persistent and unsparing denun- 
ciations of authority and its representatives from 
undermining the supports by which order and dis- 
cipline in Church and State were upheld. As events 
proved, his wild words, flung about in reckless pro- 
fusion, fell into souls full of the fermenting passions 
of the time and turned Germany into a land of misery, 
darkness and disorder. 

Luther conceived himself to be a religious teacher- 
of no ordinary standing. In his self-exploitation, he 
time and time again boasted that "his word was the 
word of Christ" and that "his mouth was the mouth of 
Christ." Holy Writ tells us that "the words of the 
Lord are pure words ; as silver tried by the fire, purified 
from the earth, refined seven times"; but the great 
biblical scholar Luther imagined himself to be must not 
have been acquainted with this pronouncement, for 
we find in his utterances on all vital religious and social 
questions such falsity and rudeness of speech as were 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 223 

never before voiced by the most depraved of mortals. 
His mouth could hardly be the mouth > of Christ, as 
he claimed, for we find it most unbecomingly glorying 
in holding up all things holy, sacred and venerable to 
unceasing ridicule and scorn. As all who are familiar 
with his utterances know, he roared like an enraged 
animal against the Church which the Master founded, 
and impudently declared her "to be the jaws of hell, 
kept wide open by the anger of God. ,, In the vilest 
and bitterest terms he denounced the head of the 
Church, who governed in Peter's place, and asserted 
him to be "Antichrist," "the man of sin," "the general 
heresiarch," "the chief of all heresies," and the one 
who "deserved to be torn in pieces with hot glim- 
mering pincers." Nor was he more respectful towards 
the episcopate of the Catholic Church, against which he 
declaimed like a madman. If you consult his "Treatise 
against the Priestly Hierarchy" you will discover for 
yourself how he indulges in the very wildest expression 
of passionate abuse against the sacrament of Holy 
Orders. Ulenberg says this incendiary volume has the 
appearance of being written "not with ink, but with 
human blood." In this work Luther is not ashamed to 
call the successors of the Apostles "hobgoblins of the 
devil," and because they would not adopt and follow 
his teaching he. wanted them "wiped off the face of 
the earth in a great rising." "Whoever," he cries out, 
"shall assist and lend his personal influence, means and 
reputation that the episcopate be destroyed and the rule 
of bishops exterminated, is a beloved son of God, a 
true Christian, an observer of God's commandments 
and wars against the ordinance of the devil." Decency 
prevents us from quoting further from this malicious 
work written to weaken and destroy the very order to 
which its author was indebted for his priesthood. 
Suffice it to say that only one who had fallen from the 
grace of his state could thus recklessly encourage the 
destruction of the episcopate and openly commend 
sacrilege and murder as means for the mob to become, 
as he declares, "the true sons of God and the right 
kind of Christians." It is almost unthinkable that any 



224 The Facts About Luther 

one using this passionate and extravagant language 
would dare insist that "his mouth was the mouth o£ 
Christ," and yet Luther was so persuaded of it that 
he prophesied that "if his gospel is preached but for 
two years, then Pope, bishops, cardinals, priests, monks, 
nuns, bells, bell-towers, masses . . . rules, statues and 
all the riff-raff of the Papal government will have 
vanished like smoke." The prediction, as might be 
expected, was never fulfilled. The Church went on 
calmly and serenely in the discharge of her heavenly 
mission as if the false prophet and his satellites had 
never existed. 

The tirades which Luther hurled incessantly against 
the Church and her ministers were only preludes to 
those he aimed against secular government ; and its 
legitimate representatives. The seeds of discord he 
so lavishly sowed in the soil of the Church were 
gradually but effectively introduced into that of the 
State. It could not be otherwise. He was naturally 
of a belligerent temperament and an .enemy to all 
existing institutions, laws and ordinances that were 
not in agreement with his ever changing policies. The 
most cursory examination of what he called his "new 
gospel" proclaims this characteristic and shows most 
convincingly the mighty difference existing between 
its spirit and that announced by the primitive Church. 
In its every line is written large the grant of liberty 
to violate all law and to disregard all authority save 
his own. Did he not set the example of disobedience 
to legitimate rule by rejecting the authority of the head 
of the Church and declaring, "Popery is an institution 
of the devil?" Did he not spurn God Himself when 
he admitted the authority of the devil who "argued 
in favor of his doctrine of justification by faith alone 
and against Mary and the Saints?" Did he not, 
without warrant or proof, proclaim his own authority 
as that of an Evangelist, who was not even to be judged 
by an Angel? Did he not reject several portions of 
the inspired Word of God and falsify others by addi- 
tions and suppressions to make them express his 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 225 

teaching of justification by faith alone? Did he not 
show throughout his excommunicated career the utmost 
recklessness concerning the most fundamental laws of 
God and an insufferable arrogance and intolerance 
towards all who refused to submit to his dictation? 
Did he not maintain that the poor man "has ample 
reason to break forth with the flail and the club" and 
when the peasants did break forth with the flail and 
the club and his advice to lay these down was ignored, 
did he not order everybody "to strike in .... to 
strangle and stab, secretly or openly — for in the case 
of a man in open rebellion everybody is both chief 
justice and executioner ?" 

In Luther's estimation his "new gospel," which was 
a gospel of rebellion and not of law and order, was 
paramount to all else. He wanted it with all its 
incendiarism to be made known and proclaimed in all 
directions. In supplicating his fellow rebels to "spread 
and aid others to spread his new gospel," he exhorted 
all to be mindful in carrying, out his designs to "teach, 
write and preach that all human establishments are 
vain." (See Hazlitt p. 375.) This was his ultimatum 
and none in the community must be at liberty to dis- 
regard or ignore it. In case any were found bold 
enough to oppose the spread of the new gospel, he 
ordered that they should be treated with the utmost 
severity. No quarter was to be given to the violators 
of his commands. He decreed in the most dictatorial 
manner that all who opposed his religious program 
were to be "denied all rights, all power, all authority 
and like wolves were to be shunned and avoided." 
Imagining himself to be the sole keeper of all heavenly 
blessings, he promised in his famous "Bull," "the grace 
of God as a reward to all who would observe and carry 
out" his new and rebellious injunctions. 

To respect, honor and obey legitimate authority r 
whether ecclesiastical or civil, had always been a sacred 
precept of the Catholic Church. With St. Paul she 
ever proclaimed what he wrote to Titus: "Admonish 
them to be subject to authorities and powers, and to 



.226 The Facts About Luther 



obey at a word ; to be ready in every good work, to 
speak evil of no man, not to be litigious, but gentle, 
showing all mildness to all men." For centuries the 
Church upheld by word and work the heavenly sanc- 
tions of law and order and whether men would hear, 
or whether they would forbear, her voice has ever been 
true to that of the Master who said : 'The Scribes and 
the Pharisees have sat in the chair of Moses. All 
things, therefore, whatsoever they shall say to you, 
observe and do, but according to their works do ye not ; 
ior they say and do not/' St. Matt, xxiii, 2, 3. Obe- 
dience to the State is not an institution of modern 
establishment, nor is it not solely one of man's estab- 
lishment. Obedience to law, obedience to the repre- 
sentative of law, to Caesar, is a Divine institution, for 
God Himself taught respect for civil authority when 
He bade the Pharisees, "Render to Caesar the things 
that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are 
God's." Civil allegiance was thus raised from a mere 
spiritual obedience to a meretorious obedience, one 
which demanded for the law and which brought its 
own rewards and punishments. It created a new type 
of citizenship founded upon law and order and abso- 
lute obedience. God's way is the way of discipline, 
of order and of respect for dominion, and His Church 
will not suffer departure therefrom in dealing with 
legitimate authority even when exercised by a Nero or 
by any of his cruel imitators. Luther, as might be 
expected from his revolutionary tendencies, set him- 
self very distinctly against this supernatural teaching 
and, in spite of all evangelical injunctions, followed 
his own way; and that way was to decry law, preach 
sedition and heap abuse upon the rightful represent-* 
atives of authority, civil and ecclesiastical. 

In the second part of a work he wrote "On Author- 
ity, etc." he expresses his views on the extent to which 
men are obliged to obey. To the question, "How far 
does worldly authority extend?" he replies in this 
strange manner : "But do you want to know why God 
has ordained that the temporal princes should make 
such shameful mistakes? I will tell you. God has 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 227 

handed them over to their wicked heart and will make 
an end to them." In the same work he raises the 
objection: "There must be an authority even among 
Christians," and his answer is, "Among Christians 
there ought not to be and there cannot be any authority. 
But they are all at the same time subject one to 
another." 

This was a pet doctrine of Luther and while its 
wicked teaching is most untenable and anarchical, it 
need not surprise any one who is in the least familiar 
with his revolutionary tendencies. It was characteristic 
of him to "despise dominion and blaspheme majesty" 
and, as he constantly set himself against all law, re- 
straint and ordinance, he could not consistently do 
otherwise than declare that "there ought not to be and 
there cannot be any authority." What dire results this 
wicked teaching brought to Church and State ever since 
it was first announced would require volumes to record. 

This open profession of the doctrine of license led 
Luther to exemplify it in his own behavior. Every 
opportunity was seized upon to show his contempt for 
dominion. He took a special delight in holding up the 
representatives of authority to ridicule and in exposing 
their faults, real or imaginary, in the most glaring 
colors till disregard for dominion gradually spread all 
over the country. Hardly a ruler of the period escaped 
his railing speech. Unmindful of St. Paul's wise advice 
"not to be litigious but gentle," he denounced the 
reigning Emperor as a "tyrant" and called him "a 
mortal sack of worms." "Here," he says, "you see 
how the poor mortal sack of worms (Madensack), the 
Emperor, who is not sure of his life for a moment, 
shamelessly boasts that he is the true, supreme pro- 
tector of the Christian faith." (Erlanger Ausgabe 
XXIV, 210.) In a like spirit of hatred and opposition 
he declared that the princes were "mad, foolish, sense- 
less, raving, frantic lunatics." In his work on 
"Authority, etc.," he says : "You must know that from 
the beginning of the world a wise prince is a rare hird > 
and still more so a pious prince; they are generally 



228 



The Facts About Luther 



the greatest fools or the worst rascals on earth; 
therefore, as regards them we may always look out 
for the worst and expect little good from them." 
Addressing the princes, he says, "People cannot, people 
will not, put up with your tyranny and caprice for any 
length of time." In another work written in 1524, 
entitled, "Two Imperial, Inconsistent and Disgusting 
Orders concerning Luther," the antagonism of the dis- 
gruntled "Evangelist" against the princes is expressed 
in extremest bitterness. He says : "From the bottom 
of my heart I be watt such a state of things in the 
hearing of all pious Christians, that like me they may 
bear with pity such crazy, stupid, furious, mad fools 
. . . May God deliver us from them, and out of mercy 
give us other rulers. Amen. 

It is evident from the few quotations given above 
that Luther believed in freedom of speech, which is a 
very good thing under approved conditions, but the use 
lie made of it was little calculated to foster in the 
people respect for authority and willingness to obey 
it. The fact is that his wholesale denunciations of the 
Emperor and the other rulers of the period, and hi3 
unsparing criticisms of existing conditions, tended to 
sow the seeds of sedition among the discontented ele- 
ments of society, to promote a revolutionary tendency 
and to arouse into activity the dormant prejudices and 
passions of the lower orders against their rulers. 

The inflammatory power of the violent expressions 
found in his writings and addresses should never have 
been used unless he intended to inaugurate a rising of 
the masses to destroy all order and government. Eras- 
mus, speaking of the crowds who assembled to hear 
JLuther and his preachers expound their new-fangled 
notions of Christian liberty, says : "I saw them coming 
from these sermons with threatening looks, and eyes 
darting fire, as men carried beyond themselves by the 
fiery discourses to which they had just listened. These 
followers of the Gospel are even ready for a conflict 
of some kind, whether with polemical or material 
weapons, if matters little." (Alzog. Vol. Ill, pp. 219, 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 229 

222.) Berzold, a non-Catholic, in his history of the 
German Reformation issued in 1890, referring to 
Luther's violent productions, says: "He should never 
have written in such a way had he not already made 
up his mind to act as leader of a Revolution. That he 
should have expected the German nation of those days 
to listen to such passionate language from the mouth 
of its 'Evangelist* ancl 'Ettas' without being carried 
beyond the bounds of law and order, was a naivete 
only to be explained by his ignorance of the world and 
his exclusive attention to religious interests." Con- 
cerning the effects of such language upon the people, 
the same historian wrote as late as 1908: "How else 
but in a material sense was the plain man to interpret 
Luther's proclamation of Christian freedom and his 
extravagant strictures on the parsons and nobles ?" 

The evil consequence of holding up the rulers of the 
nation .to ridicule and denouncing them as "tyrants" 
and "persecutors" did not entirely escape Luther's own 
attention. As early as 1522, in his "Advice to all 
Christians, etc.," he writes: "It seems as if a rebellion 
is going to break out . . . and the whole clerical body 
are about to be murdered and driven out, if they do not 
prevent it by an earnest, visible change for the better. 
For the poor man, in excitement and grief on account 
of the damage he has suffered in his goods, his body 
and his soul, has been tried too much and has been 
oppressed by them beyond all measure, in the most 
perfidious manner. Henceforth he can and will no 
longer put up zvith such a state of things, and, more- 
over, he has ample reason to break forth with the 
Hail and the club as Karsthans threatens to do" 

Luther did not have long to wait to see his fears 
realized. The incentive to rebellion, which he had 
long instigated and developed, was at last realized in 
the tremendous outbreak of the "Peasants' War," 
which was led by fanatics of Miinzer's persuasion, in 
the year 1525. The peasants were for the most part 
a quiet and peaceful class, and at first had little thought 
of rebelling against their rulers. They, suffered much, 



230 The Facts About Luther 



however, from unjust oppression which prevailed at 
the time to a large extent in many parts of Germany. 
They had many and great grievances to endure. 
Naturally they wanted their complaints heard, their 
wrongs remedied and their request for a modicum 
share of liberty conceded. A manifesto setting forth 
their demands was drawn up and scattered all over the 
country. There is little doubt that most of what they 
claimed was founded in strict justice and might easily 
have been granted by the rulers. Veeder says : "That 
the ideals and demands of the peasants were substan- 
tially just is conceded by practically every modern 
writer of the period and is tacitly confessed by sub- 
sequent legislation in Germany, which has virtually 
conceded every one of their demands and more." 

The proposals of the peasants published in the 
"Twelve Articles" of the "Manifesto" give unmis- 
takable proofs of the religious character of their 
demands of justice. Luther tells us that what pleased 
him best in the Peasants' Articles was their "readiness 
to be guided by clear, plain, undeniable passages of 
Scripture." It was believed by those who drew up the 
petition for redress that all the claims, even those 
relating to the tithes, to hunting, fishing, forest rights, 
etc., could be proved from Holy Scripture. The 
peasants were willing to be advised, but they said they 
would not abandon their claims unless they were 
refuted "with* clear, manifest, undeniable texts of 
Scripture." The First Article demanded liberty to 
preach the Gospel and the right of congregations to 
elect and depose their parish priests. The Third Article 
declared: "There are to be no serfs, because Christ 
has liberated us all!' In presenting their requests, they 
at the same time made it plain that they reserved to 
themselves the right to make in the future such addi- 
tional demands as they might come to recognize as 
being in accordance with Holy Scripture. Thus a 
higher warrant was bestowed upon the complaints and 
demands concerning secular and material matters. The 
preaching of the "new gospel" supervened in addition 
to the consideration of the oppression of the peasantry. 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 231 

To all the petitions for a more equitable adjustment 
of the lamentable conditions existing among the 
common people, most of the rulers turned a deaf ear. 
Unfortunately, instead of listening patiently and sym- 
pathetically to the well-grounded complaints of their 
subjects, the princes not only refused to consider the 
demands made on them and afford relief, but they 
added insult to injury by treating them with the utmost 
harshness and severest cruelty. A strong desire for 
retaliation now filled the minds of the aggrieved and 
despised peasants. Fancying they were helping the 
new gospel, they thought it lawful to rise against those 
masters who had been represented to them as tyrants 
and persecutors of the Word of God. Forthwith the 
standard of revolt was everywhere raised and on it was 
inscribed the talismanic word — Liberty. 

At the breaking out of the rebellion, when the greater 
part of Germany was thrown into arms, fierce fanati- 
cism and wild extravagance dominated the minds and 
spirits of the insurgents. In the disastrous conflict the 
-heavy oppression and the many disabilities under which 
the masses had labored for years were for the most 
part entirely forgotten, and, in their place, was substi- 
tuted an uncontrollable passion for complete liberty 
as outlined in Luther's "gospel of freedom" under the 
mistaken approbation found in biblical passages for 
equality among the classes and a juster distribution 
of property. Luther was the "man of the Evangel" 
and on him the eyes of the great number of the peasants 
were directed when the rising unfortunately took place. 
The new preaching, proclaimed by word of mouth and 
in writings, readily fostered among the excited masses 
the most fantastic and impossible notions of a society 
in which they were to be in complete and undisputed 
control. The passions of the multitude were stirred 
up to the highest pitch. They purposed to overthrow 
the whole political and social structure as it then 
existed. They wanted to efface all inequalities in 
property, employment and rank. In the new social 
order they aimed to establish "there were to be no 



232 



The Pacts About Luther 



rulers or subjects, no rich or poor, no cities or com- 
merce, but all should live in primitive simplicity and 
perfect equality." 

The fanatical ministers, who harangued the peasants 
and urged them on to execute their extravagant and 
impractical scheme, made bold to tell their dupes "that 
it was God's will they should everywhere kill and 
destroy without mercy until all the mighty were laid 
low and the promised Kingdom of God established." 
Miinzer, who led the insurgent troops, and all his 
radical associates, according to McGiffert and hundreds 
of other non-Catholic authors, "appealed to Luther's 
gospel and quoted his writings in support of their 
program. They called themselves his followers and 
declared it their purpose to put his principles into 
practice. And whatever was true of the leaders, by 
the great mass of the peasants themselves it was 
doubtless honestly believed that Luther was with 
them and they could count on his sympathy and 
support" (McGiffert p. 252.) 

The unrest, brought about by the preaching of the 
apostasy, came quickly to a head and the catastrophe 
foreseen filled all with alarm. The rising spread terror 
on all sides as the insurgents attempted to revenge 
their wrongs by bloodshed. The passions of the crowd 
were thoroughly aroused and the flames of insurrection 
were kindled all over the country. 

At this time Luther, who was thoroughly alarmed, 
wrote a pamphlet with the purpose of keeping the 
insurgents within limits. In this work entitled, "An 
Exhortation to Peace" he urges the peasants to keep 
quiet and renounce all desire for revenge, and appeals 
to the rulers to show a modicum of mercy and to grant 
at least some few measures of relief. His endeavor 
at this time to stop the full outbreak of the revolution 
was no doubt sincere ; but his interposition in favor of 
order came too late and lost all its force by reason 
of his own blundering in the use of language which 
tended not to check, but to develop most effectively the 
growth and advancement of the revolutionary spirit. 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 233 



"Had Luther," observes Grisar, "been endowed with 
a clear perception of the position of affairs, and seen 
the utter uselessness of any attempt merely to stem 
the movement, he would not at this critical juncture 
have still further irritated the rebels by the attacks 
tipon the gentry, into which he allowed himself to 
break out and which were at once taken advantage of." 

Luther's "Exhortation to Peace 3 ' consists of two 
parts, one addressed to the princes, the other to the 
peasants. In the first part of this work, he throws 
once more the blame on the princes and then cries 
out: "Your government consists in nothing else but 
ileecing and oppressing the poor common people in 
order to support your own magnificence and arrogance 
till they neither can nor will endure it. The sword is 
at your throat; you think you sit fast in the saddle 
and that it will be impossible to overthrow you. But 
you will find that your self-confidence and obstinacy 
will be the breaking of your necks." "You are bringing 
it upon yourselves and wish to get your heads broken. 
There is no use in any further warning or admonish- 
ing." "God has so ordained it that your furious raging 
neither can nor shall any longer be endured. You must 
tecome different and give way to the word of God; 
if you refuse to do it willingly, then you will be forced 
to do it by violence and riot. If the peasants do not 
accomplish it, others must." 

In the second part of the same work he addresses the 
peasants and exhorts them not only to suffer in a 
Christian manner, but to be ready to endure even per- 
secution and oppression willingly. This special pleading 
came with strange grace from one who was instru- 
mental in raising the call to arms and, as might be 
expected, its effect was destroyed by fresh attacks 
against the ruling classes. He says, for instance: it 
they, the Lords and Princes, "forbid the preaching of 
the gospel and oppress the people so unbearingly, then 
they deserve that God should cast them down from 
their thrones, as they sin mightily against God and 
man, nor have they any excuse." Luther fancies he 



234 The Facts About Luther 

already sees the hands stretched out to execute the 
sentence and concludes his address by saying to the 
princes : "Tyrants seldom die in their beds ; as a rule, 
they perish by a bloody death. Since it is certain that 
you govern tyrannically and savagely, forbidding the 
preaching of the gospel, and fleecing and oppressing 
the people, there is no comfort or hope for you, but 
to perish as those like you have perished." 

The foregoing is the merest summary of Luther's 
pamphlet On Peace. From the few quotations we 
have furnished it is clear that his ill-timed and impru- 
dent language was little calculated to inspire confidence 
and promote the interests of peace between the two 
parties who were at daggers' points. Whilst we believe 
that he desired when the outbreak was begun that alt 
should desist from violence and preserve order, yet 
we cannot forget that his excitement and his anxiety^ 
to advance the interests of his special gospel interpre- 
tation so overcame him as to induce him to use lan- 
guage in denunciation of the injustice of the princes 
which could not fail to bring into fullest play the 
aroused passions of the oppressed and sorely tried 
peasants. The ideas of gospel freedom, which he set 
forth in such inflammatory terms, stuck too fast in their 
memory and imagination to be displaced by any 
later pronouncements, especially when these were 
coupled with fresh attacks against their oppressors. 
Henceforth no appeals to keep order and observe law 
were of use to extinguish the fire already enkindled 
in their souls. All they thought of now was what 
pleased them in Luther's denunciations of their wrongs, 
and, hence, all advice to have nothing to do with 
rebellion or revolution was spurned and contemned. 

Luther is now thoroughly vexed. He is angered 
because the common people, whom he felt he owned 
body and soul, were no longer willing in his changed 
mood to listen to his advice and submit to his further 
dictation. To his mind such conduct in any man or 
any body of men was an unpardonable crime. But 
he had instilled into their minds his new "biblical"" 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 235 

ideas of freedom, and, like the docile disciples they 
proved themselves to be for a time, they considered 
his teachings favorable to their movement, affording 
them "ample reason to break forth with the flail and 
the club." To abandon these ideas now that they 
Avere cognizant of his shifting position was a course 
they were altogether unwilling to pursue. He had is 
taught them to use their own judgment in the inter- iat 
pretation of the Bible and they felt they were entirely *4 
within their rights when they differed from him and 
set up a view of their own, one which especially 
agreed with their leanings and tendencies. This they 
would not relinquish at his command. They refused 
to heed his appeal to lay down their arms. Up to this 
time Luther had made common cause wjth the peas- 
ants, but now that they ^claimed a right to think for 
themselves and to frame doctrines of their own mak- 
ing, gaining an evil name for his gospel because of 
the frightful atrocities everywhere perpetrated in its 
name, he forthwith changed his attitude towards them 
and immediately presented himself in a new aspect, 
that of a cruel and relentless oppressor. 

Imagining that the warlike disturbances which pre- 
vailed on all sides were the work of the devil, Luther 
thought it high time, as he considered himself his 
chief foe, to oppose his Satanic Majesty and prevent 
him from inflicting further injury on himself and com- 
promising still more the cause of his evangel. "If," 
he says, "the devil devoured him in the struggle the 
result would be a belly cramp." Whilst his excitement 
increases as he sees his influence in the ranks of the 
peasants decline (and his fancies at the time concern- 
ing "signs in the heavens and wonders on the earth" 
^'foreboding no good," grow), sanguinary encounters 
were the order of the day. The insurrectionary party 
spread rapidly over Swabia, the Rhine provinces, Fran- 
conia, Thuringia and even approached his own Saxony. 
Everything was upside down. Luther became thor- 
oughly alarmed. What he saw and heard of the 
atrocities in the insurgent districts filled him with fear 



236 The Facts About Luther 

and dread. He "now asked himself ," says Grisar y 
"what the new evangel could win supposing the popu- 
lace gained the upper hand, and, also how the rulers, 
who had hitherto protected his cause would fare in 
the event of the rebels being successful in the Saxon 
Electorate and at Wittenberg." Passionate rage, nj>t 
discriminating justice, decided his course of action. 
Assuming the role of a cruel and relentless oppressor, 
he treacherously turns upon the poor peasants as if 
they were not his own spiritual progeny whom he led 
into the trap, and loudly clamors for the Princes to 
turn out in force to exterminate all who had taken up 
the sword against them. In the fury of his wrath 
at the horrors of the armed rebellion, he seemed to 
forget that he had ever been the relentless enemy of the 
princes, that he had incessantly rebuked them for their 
tyranny and that he had brazenly denounced them as 
"the greatest fools and the worst rascals on earth." 
So bitter was his hostility towards the very people 
whom, as Osiander, the non-Catholic historian, says,, 
he "flattered and caressed while they were content with 
attacking the bishops and the clergy," that he now 
calls upon the rulers, regardless of his former antipathy^ 
toward them, to act in the most vigorous and relentless- 
manner for their complete suppression and extermina- 
tion. Thus, from the rebels, whose cause he once 
espoused and encouraged, he turns in basest perfidy 
and meanest sycophancy to ally himself entirely with 
their oppressors. 

At this juncture he wrote a terrible tract entitled, 
"Against the Murderous and Rapacious Hordes of the 
Peasants' 9 to urge the civil authorities to crush the 
revolution. This tract was issued about May 4, 1525. 
In a copy preserved at the British Museum, London, 
we find these heartless words : "Pure deviltry is urging 
on the peasants; they rob and rage and behave like 
mad dogs." "Therefore let all who are able, mow them 
down, slaughter and stab them, openly or in secret, and 
remember that there is nothing more poisonous,, 
noxious and utterly devilish than a rebel. You must 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 23T 

kill him as you would a mad dog; if you* do not fall 
upon him, he will fall upon you and the whole land." 

In this tract Luther claims that the peasants are 
not fighting for his new teaching, nor serving the 
evangel. "They," he says, "serve the devil under the 
appearance of the evangel ... I believe that the deviL 
feels the approach of the Last Day and therefore has 
recourse to such unheard of trickery . . . Behold what 
a powerful prince the devil is, how He holds the world 
in his hands, and can knead it as he pleases." "I think 
there is not a single devil now left in Hell, but they 
have all gone into the peasants. The raging is exceed- 
ingly great and beyond all measure." 

He therefore calls upon the princes to exert their 
authority with all their might. "Whatever peasants," 
he says, "are killed in the fray, are lost body and soul 
and are the devil's own for all eternity. The authori- 
ties must resolve to chastise and slay so long as they 
can raise a finger: Thou, O God, must judge and act^ 
It may be that whoever is killed on the side of the 
authorities is really a martyr in God's cause. A happier 
death no man could die. The present time is so strange 
that a prince can gain Heaven by spilling blood easier 
than another person can by praying." 

Luther does not forget to exhort the evangelically- 
minded rulers to remember to offer the "mad peasants," 
even at the last, "just and reasonable terms, but where 
this is of no avail to have recourse at once to the 
sword." Before this, however, he says: "I will not 
forbid such rulers as are able to chastise and slay the 
peasants without previously offering them terms, 
although it is not according to the Gospel." % 

"He is not opposed to indulgence being shown those 
who have been led astray. He recommends that the 
many "pious-folk" who, against their will, were com- 
pelled to join the diabolical league, should be spared. 
At the same time, however, he declares, that they, like 
the others, are "going to the devil . . . For a pious 
Christian ought to be willing to endure a hundred 
deaths rather than yield one hair's breadth to the cause 



238 The Facts About Luther 



of the peasants." "It has been said," Grisar further 
remarks, "it was for the purpose of liberating those 
who had been compelled to join the insurgents, that he 
admonished the princes in such strong terms, even 
promising them heaven as the reward for their 
shedding of blood, and that the overthrow of the 
revolt by every possible means was, though in this 
sense only, 'for Luther a real work of charity. 5 " This, 
however, is incorrect, for he does not speak of saving 
and sparing those who had been led astray until after 
the passage where he says that the princes might gain 
heaven by the shedding of blood ; nor is there any inner 
connection between the passages; he simply says: 
'There is still one matter to which the authorities might 
well give attention. Even had they no other cause for 
whetting their sword against the peasants this (the 
saving of those who had been led astray) would be 
more than sufficient reason/ After the appeal for 
mercy towards those who had been forced to fight, 
there follows the cry : 'Let whoever is able help in the 
slaughter; should you die in the struggle, you could 
not have a more blessed death.' He concludes with 
Romans xiii, 4, concerning the authorities; "who bear 
not the sword in vain, avengers to execute wrath upon 
him that doth evil." 

"While his indignant pen stormed over this murder- 
ous paper, Luther had been thinking with terror of the 
consequences of the bloody contest, and of the likeli- 
hood of the peasants coming off victorious. He writes : 
"We know not whether God may not intend to prelude 
the Last Day, which cannot be far distant, by allowing 
the devil to destroy all order and government, and to 
reduce the world to a scene of desolation, so that Satan 
may obtain the 'Kingdom of this world/ " 

Such is the brief summary Grisar makes of this 
tract "Against the Murderous and Rapacious Hordes 
of Peasants" which was written to hound on the 
authorities to slay in cold blood their misguided sub- 
jects and "choke them like mad dogs." 

All along, from the time this tract was first issued 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 



239 



till the present, every non-Catholic writer of note has 
been loud in denouncing and condemning its passionate 
tone and cruel teaching. Among the latest in our own 
day we present the following estimates. Lindsay, an 
ardent supporter of the Reformer, in 1908 says: "In 
this terrible pamphlet Luther hounded on the princes 
to crush the rising. When all is said that can reason- 
ably be said in explanation of his action, we cannot 
help feeling that the language of this pamphlet is an 
ineffaceable stain on Luther, which no extenuating 
circumstances can wipe out. It remains the greatest 
blot on his life and career/' (Lindsay's Luther, p. 
186.) McGiffert, writing in 1912, says: "The tract 
seemed over-harsh and cruel even to many of his 
friends/' (McGiffert, p. 256.) Vedder, writing ia 
1914, says: "The passionate violence and bitterness 
of this pamphlet constitutes to this day an ineradicable 
blot on the name and the fame of Luther, for which 
his admirers attempt various lame apologies, but na 
defense. His conduct is the more condemnable when 
we recollect that he was the son of a peasant, that his 
sympathies should naturally have been with the class 
from which he had risen, and that in thus taking 
without reservation the side of the princes, and becom- 
ing more violent in words than they were in deed, he 
was acting the renegade. But no stones should be. 
cast at him to-day by those men who have come up 
from the lower ranks, and obtained professional stand- 
ing or business eminence and now for hire take the 
side of corporate wealth and special interests, against 
the rights and welfare of the plain people from whom 
they sprang. Even Luther's friends were shocked by 
this pamphlet and remonstrated with him." (Vedder,, 
p. 244.) 

Luther's advice "to strangle" the peasants, "to stab 
them secretly and openly, as they can, as one would 
kill a mad dog," was fulfilled to the letter. He thought 
that "God gave rulers not a fox's tail, but a sword," 
and "the severity and rigor of the sword," he says, "are 
as necessary for the people as eating and drinking, yes* 



240 



The Facts About Luther 



as life itself/' The time in his estimation had come 
"to control the populace with a strong hand" and the 
rulers must resort to "the severity and rigor of the 
sword." "Like the mules," he says, "who will not move 
unless you perpetually whip them with rods, so the civil 
powers must drive the common people, whip, choke, 
hang, burn, behead and torture them, that they may 
learn to fear the powers that be. The coarse, illiterate 
Mr. Great I am — the people — must be forced, driven 
as one forces and drives swine and wild animals." (El. 
ed. 15, 276.) This is a most astounding utterance, but 
apart from its heartlessness and lack of consideration 
of the common people it shows the way Luther 
preached liberty and democracy, a liberty and de- 
mocracy which meant absolutism and despotism armed 
with all its iron terrors in government and through 
which for nearly two centuries after the nations of 
Europe were oppressed and tyrannized. 

The insurgent bands fought under the name of the 
"Christian Evangelical Army." They struck for what 
they had come to call "Gospel liberty," and they counted 
confidently upon supernatural aid in their blind and 
reckless undertaking. They had the spirit and the 
courage of the boldest of warriors, but they were 
unprepared for the mighty contest. They were undis- 
ciplined and lacked adequate military training. As 
might be expected in the circumstances, all their 
attempts to overcome the thoroughly equipped forces 
of the confederated princes were in vain. The struggle 
went on with vigor and intensity, but defeat met the 
insurgents at every turn. At last the hostile enemies 
met in May 1525 on the memorable field of Franken- 
hausen. Before the battle, Miinzer, the leader of the 
peasants, excited his troops by an enthusiastic appeal, 
and, confident of success, he promised his followers 
that "he would catch all the bullets aimed at them in his 
sleeves." His prediction failed in its realization. The 
enemy's fire came thick and fast and so thinned the 
ranks of the peasant forces that they were obliged to 
flee in utter confusion. Miinzer, who fell mortally 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 241 

wounded, was taken and publicly executed. In his 
last hours he recanted his errors and was reconciled 
to the Church of his fathers. He died exhorting the 
people to hold fast to the true Catholic faith. To his 
last breath he accused Luther, whose fanatical teach- 
ings he unfortunately imbibed and advocated, of having 
been the cause of all his misfortunes. With the death 
of Munzer the insurrection ended. The confederated 
chiefs scored victory. Their triumph hushed the voice 
of the poor peasants crying out for redress of 
grievances in their blood. The civil powers obeyed 
Luther. They wielded the sword unsparingly. They 
drove the common people before them like mules ; they 
whipped, choked, hung, burnt, beheaded, tortured and 
slaughtered "to teach them to learn to fear the powers 
that be." The result of the rebellion, thus stifled in 
the blood of the common people, was a weakening of 
the democratic principle and a strengthening of the 
arm of power. 

In the short time the rebellion lasted the peasants 
were slaughtered like sheep. It is computed that more 
than a hundred thousand men fell in the field of battle. 
Cities were leveled to the ground, churches, monasteries 
and asylums were burned. Immense treasures of 
painting, sculpture and other works of art were 
destroyed. All manner of excesses were committed 
and general disorder prevailed. The rights of prop- 
erty, of life and of liberty were ruthlessly trampled 
tinder foot Wholesale massacre and sacrilege, un- 
heard of in the Catholic Middle Ages, were the order 
of the day whilst the war lasted. Had the insurgents 
triumphed Germany would have relapsed into bar- 
barism; literature, arts, poetry, morality, faith and 
authority would have been buried under the same ruin. 
This was the greatest tragedy of the age and surpassed 
in magnitude any ever seen in Germany before. The 
dire results it occasioned did not, however, in the least 
disturb Luther. When the war ended and the 
Reformer saw the last of the crowd he exhorted the 
princes to slaughter for carrying out his own pet prin- 



£42 The Facts About Luther 



ciples, he celebrated their funeral, as Osiander tells us, 
"by marrying a nun" he helped to escape from her 
convent. This reminds us of Erasmus' significant 
remark, that while Luther was reveling in his nuptials, 
"a hundred thousand peasants were descending to the 
tomb." The massacre of the podt victims of his 
"Evangel of freedom" was evidently a matter of little 
concern to the holy (?) man, the ex-priest, Martin 
Luther and his Katie Von Bora, the Adam and Eve of 
the "new gospel" of concubinage. 

The voice of all history proclaims that Luther was 
the cause of the insurrection of the peasants and of 
their subsequent massacre. Protestant writers for the 
last four centuries have declared that he was the fire- 
brand who alternately stirred up peasant against prince 
and prince against peasant. Intelligent non-Catholic 
minds of his own day denounced him as the instiga- 
tor of the rising and accused him of being the cause 
of all the subsequent bloodshed. Besides Osiander, 
whom we quoted above, we have, for instance, 
Hospinian and Simon, two careful observers of the 
times who looked upon him as the disturber of the 
peace and the promoter of revolution. Hospinian 
says, addressing Luther: "It is you who excited the 
peasants to revolt" Simon asserts the same thing r 
"We leave to Lutherans to ponder over the outlandish, 
and sanguinary factions which they excited some years 
ago in order to introduce and recommend their doc- 
trines." Ulrich Zasius, the jurist, who at one time 
had been inclined to favor Luther, wrote in the year 
of the revolt to his friend Amerbach as follows: 
"Luther, the destroyer of peace, the most pernicious of 
men, has plunged the whole of Germany into such 
madness, that we now consider ourselves lucky if we 
are not slain on the spot." Cochlaeus, estimating the 
number of the slaughtered peasants at one hundred and 
fifty thousand, does not exaggerate when he declares 
that "on the day of Judgment, Miinzer and his peasants 
will cry out before God and His angels, 'Vengeance on 
Luther.' " Erasmus, who was closely observing Luther, 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 243 

reproached him with having fomented the rebellion 
"by his libels against the monks and shaven crowns. " 
When Luther wrote that "he believed there was not a 
single devil now left in hell, but that they had all gone 
into the peasants/' and that a prince "now might 
letter earn heaven by bloodshed than by prayer," 
JErasmus promptly answered him in these memorable 
words : "We are now reaping the fruit of your spirit. 
You do not acknowledge the rebels, but they acknowl- 
edge you, and it is well known that many who boast 
of the name of the evangel have been instigators of 
the horrible revolt. It is true you have attempted in 
your grim booklet against the peasants to allay this 
suspicion, but nevertheless you cannot dispel the 
general conviction that this mischief was caused by 
the books you sent forth against the monks and 
bishops, in favor of evangelical freedom, and against 
the tyrants, more especially by those written in 
German." (Hyperaspistes, Opp. p. 1032.) 

As time went on numerous authors other than 
Luther's contemporaries wrote on the important topic, 
and they, cognizant of all the testimony in the case, 
proclaimed in the interests of truth the Reformer's 
undoubted agency in bringing about the "Peasants' 
War." Plank, an eminent Protestant writer and 
defender of Luther, says : "It is but too evident that 
this revolution was prepared by the reform agitations, 
and that by such agitations the minds of the people 
were deluded by such a swindle which otherwise would 
not have inflamed so many minds at once." (Plank, 
Entstch. Des Prob. Lehb.) Karl Hagen, an eminent 
Protestant historian, writes : "Even Luther ... in his 
earlier writings, contributed to foster the rebellious 
feeling among the people ; for once he actually incited 
the German nation to bathe itself in the blood of the 
Papists, and he declared that they would do a 
thing agreeable to God, who would make away 
with the Bishops, destroy Churches and Convents! 
He 'called,., the princes... impious, miserable 
rascals... silly fools,' whose tyranny and caprice 



244 The Facts About Luther 



people neither could, nor would put up with for any 
length of time. .Was it surprising that this judgment 
of the Reformer concerning the reigning powers 
remained uppermost in the minds of his readers, and 
tha,t on the other hand they doubted the correctness of 
his doctrine of unconditional obedience ?" (K. Hagen r 
Deutsche Geschichte, etc. pp. 183-184.) Lindsay, in 
his "Luther and the German Reformation," page 169, 
says : "When we consider the causes which produced 
the Peasants' War, it must be acknowledged that there 
was an intimate connection between that disastrous 
outburst and Luther's message to the German people." 
McGiffert, whilst he does not wish to hold his hero 
responsible for the tremendous uprising of 1525, never- 
theless makes the following significant admission on 
page 250: "His (Luther's) attacks upon many features 
of the existing order, his criticisms of the growings 
luxury of the wealthier classes, his denunciation of 
the rapacity and greed of great commercial magnates 
and of the tyranny and corruption of rulers both civil 
and ecclesiastical, all tended to inflame the populace 
and spread impatience and discontent. His Gospel of 
Christian liberty also had its effect." Vedder, on page 
242 of his work on Luther, says: The peasants 
"became conscious that they had rights, that they might 
rise, and that their inherited condition was a hindrance 
to them. At this time Luther came preaching that the 
Pope was a tyrant, imposing unjust, useless, even 
injurious laws upon the people; that the bishops were 
doing the same thing; and that the rulers, in addition 
to the wrongs that they themselves inflicted, were pro- 
tecting and upholding the Pope and the bishops. Those 
among the poorer classes who believed Luther came to 
feel that the rulers were their enemies and God's 
enemies. That they had this feeling is proved by their 
conduct, by their publications and the testimony of alL 
That Luther's teaching helped to produce and intensify 
it is equally clear." 

But, why multiply evidence to prove our contention ? 
[The most conclusive argument is furnished by Luther 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 245 

himself who accepted the responsibility for the wide 
slaughter of the peasants. On one occasion in later 
years, looking back upon the events of the unhappy 
rising, he declared that he was completely at ease con- 
cerning the advice he had given to the authorities 
against the peasants, in spite of the sanguinary results. 
"Preachers," he says, in his usual drastic mode of 
expression, "are the biggest murderers about, for they 
admonish the authorities to fulfil their duty and to 
punish the wicked. I, Martin Luther, slew all the 
peasants in the rebellion, for I said they should be slain ; 
all their blood is upon my head, But," he blas- 
phemously added, "I put it upon the Lord God by 
whose command I spoke." Thus his usual persuasion, 
viz., that he was God's instrument, here again is made 
use of. 

Luther's cruel pamphlet against the "murderous 
peasants" caused such an amount of criticism and 
complaint among his friends and followers that he 
thought himself called upon to answer "the wise-acres 
who wished to teach him how he should write" and 
to vindicate all he advocated in his previous publica- 
tions. This he did in an 'open letter, ,, which he is- 
sued when the revolt was practically suppressed and 
peace was partially assured. A careful perusal of 
this work, which was written not under pressure of 
excitement, but in cold blood and after due deliberation* 
shows that he recants nothing of what he taught before* 
but brazenly repeats the offense and in spite of the 
scandal caused even takes pleasure in using stronger 
language than any he had already availed himself of. 
In his endeavor to justify himself he boldly maintains 
that it was quite right for him to say, "that everybody 
ought to strike into the peasants, strangle them, stab 
them by stealth or openly as they can, as one would kill 
a mad dog." This is his deliberate opinion concerning 
his former work as he clearly declares in the fol- 
lowing passage: "Therefore my little book against 
the peasants is quite in tEe right and shall remain so, 
even if all the world were to be scandalized at it. ,r 



246 The Facts About Luther 



{Erlanger Ausgabe, XXIV, 299.) "Here, as in many 
other places, where Luther has to defend his standpoint 
against attack," Kostlin, a non-Catholic, says of this 
writing, "he draws the reins tighter instead of easing 
them. Here he no longer sees fit to say even one 
word in behalf of the peasants, notwithstanding the 
Teal grievances which had caused the rising." 

It was characteristic of Luther never to admit that 

lie was in the wrong. He says of himself: "To the 
test of my judgment, there is neither Emperor, king 
nor devil to whom I would yield : no* I would not yield 
«ven to the whole world." 

His dislike for the peasants on account of their 
disagreement with his general views was deep rooted 
and on every available occasion he manifested this 
feeling in vilest denunciation. In speech and writ- 
ing, he poured forth bitterest words of anger against 
them. "A peasant is a hog," he says in 1532, "for 
when a hog is slaughtered it is dead, and in the same 
way the peasant does not think about the next life, 
for otherwise he would behave very differently." 
(Schlaginhaufen, "Auf.zeichnungen" p. 118.) At the 
same period he says : "The peasant remains a boor, 
do what you will"; "they have," so he remarks, 
"their mouth, nose, eyes and everything else in the 
wrong place." "I believe that the devil does not mind 
the peasants"; he "despises them as he does leaden 
pennies"; he thinks "he can easily manage to secure 
them for himself, as they will assuredly be claimed 
t>y no one." (Cordatus, "Tagebuch," p. 127.) "A 
peasant who is a Christian is like a wooden poker." 
(Cordatus, Ibid. p. 131.) To one who was about* to 
marry he wrote: "My Katie sends you this friendly 
warning, to beware of marrying a country lass, for 
they are rude and proud, cannot get on well with their 
husbands and know neither how to cook nor to brew." 
( Brief e, ed De Wette.) 

"The peasants as well as the nobles throughout the 
country," he complains in 1533, in a letter to Spalatin, 
"have entered into a conspiracy against the evangel, 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 24X 

though they make use of the liberty of the gospel ia 
the most outrageous manner. It is not surprising that 
the Papists oppose us. God will be our Judge in this 
matter! Oh, the awful ingratitude of our age, we 
can only hope and pray for the speedy coming of our 
Lord and Saviour (the Last Day)." ( Brief wechsel, 9, 

P- 333-) 

The violent invective which Luther hurled against 
the "murderous peasants" in the year 1525 had a last- 
ing and disastrous effect, not only on the Ref ormation r 
but on the Reformer himself. All fair-minded Protes- 
tant historians, writing of this period, acknowledge 
that his former popularity and his influence over the 
crowd were gone. Up to this he seemed to have the 
greater number of the discontented behind him, but 
now that his power over them was weakened, owing 
to his fickle and vacillating nature, he was obliged (in 
the presence of his changing tactics) more and more 
to seek the assistance necessary to maintain his 
preachments in the camp of the princes. His shift- 
ing from the peasants to the authorities caused no 
small amount of adverse criticism and in consequence 
he was denounced and even branded as a "hypocrite** 
and "slave of princes ,, by many of the discontented* 
All were against him and some even, as he says himself r 
"threatened him with death." "The springtime of the 
Reformation was over," says Hausrath. "Luther no 
longer passed from one triumph to another as he had 
during the first seven years of his career. He himself 
says : 'Had not the revolted peasants fouled the water 
for my fishing, things would look very different for 
the Papacy/ The hope to overthrow completely the 
Roman rule in Germany by means of a united, over- 
whelmingly powerful, popular movement had become 
a mere dream." (Hausrath, "Luther's Leben," 2, p~ 
62.) 

Luther was fully aware of the disastrous conse- 
quences of his evil teachings. He recognized that the 
common people, as a result of his doctrines, lost man>r 
rights and privileges, which they had previously 



248 



Th'E Facts About Luther 



enjoyed, and that they were no longer disposed to look 
upon him as a leader worthy of confidence and support. 
The crowds that heretofore followed him in rebellion 
were gradually decreasing in numbers and there were 
grave fears that the safety and progress of his pet 
schemes were in danger of complete collapse. To 
preserve and keep his evangel in prominence was the 
problem that confronted him. It called for a speedy 
and practical solution. As he was a consummate poli- 
tician, ever ready to sacrifice any principle for political 
expediency, he had no difficulty in rising to the 
emergency. Having abandoned the people who he 
had at one time believed, had the right of armed 
resistance to authority, he sees now the need he has 
in his shaky position of the strong arm of the secular 
power. Putting aside all his innermost convictions 
regarding an independent Church free from* secular 
control, he now in cowardice and weakness determines 
to place his whole reliance for the propagation of his 
evangel on the princes he once denounced and con- 
demned. This vacillating character, who once re- 
pudiated all authority in religion, and rejected that 
of Pope and Emperor, now falls back on it as em- 
bodied in the princes of the period. Under the pres- 
sure of circumstances and in spite of his better 
judgment, he accepted Erastianism as a practical 
solution of a difficult problem and forthwith inaugu- 
rated the typical State-Church, a Church which soon 
after became the tool and instrument of civil power 
and which eventually was absorbed by it. 'The State/' 
Grisar says, "had stood sponsor to the new faith on 
its first appearance, and, whether in Luther's interest 
or in its own, the State continued to intervene in 
matters pertaining to the Church. This interweaving 
of politics with religion failed to insure to the new 
Church the friendly assistance of the State but soon 
brought it into a position of entire subservience in 
spite of the protests of the originators of the innova- 
tions." (Grisar III, p. 29.) "The Catholic Church" 
observes Fr. Johnston, "had preferred to lose a 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 24& 



nation — England — rather than abandon her principles : 
Luther won over the larger part of his nation — Germany 
— by abandoning his own principles." 

As Melanchthon had foreseen, the most insupportable 
tyranny took the place of the promised freedom of faith 
and conscience in consequence of state absorption of 
Church interests. According to the execrable maxim 
of the Lutheran creed, "Cujus regio, ejus religio," 

' which was formally enunciated by the rulers and theo- 
logians of that church assembled at Passau soon after 
Luther's death and which gained wide acceptance,, 
the religion of each province depended on the caprice 
of its reigning prince. "He that owns the country 
owns the Church, and he that makes your laws for you 
has a right to make your religion for you." There 
never was a theory more odious, both in the light of 
civil and of religious liberty. If the prince chose to 
go over to the Reformers, his subjects had to go with 
him. In one instance, that of Pfalz, the religion o£ 
the people was changed arbitrarily four times within 
eighty years by reason of this principle. Cathofic 
worship was forbidden, Catholic priests were banished, 
and if any resisted the new order of things, he was 
robbed of his goods, expelled from the land, or subdued 
by imprisonment, hunger, tortures and threats of death. 
In some cases the territories of Catholic rulers were 
forcibly seized and Protestantized by Protestant 
princes. Dukedoms and kingdoms became "Lutheran," 
or "Sacramentarian," or "Calvinistic," or adopted some 
other phase of Protestantism, according to the dictates 
of the prince or duke or king who ruled them. This 
is simply a historical fact and cannot be disproved. 

It is also undeniable that, with few exceptions, the 
almost countless Protestant "confessions" and "decla- 
rations of belief" of the sixteenth century were 
submitted to the>approval of secular rulers and enforced 
by them. Xhis is the fact as regards the Augsburg" 
Confession, which is the fundamental declaration of 
belief of the Lutherans; the Heidelberg Catechism, 

- the most generally accepted formula of belief of the 



250 The Facts About Luther 

"'Sacramentarians" "or followers of Zwingle and 
Calvin" or, as they style themselves, the "Reformed" 
churches of France, Switzerland, Germany and Hol- 
land, and it is notoriously true with regard to the 
^Thirty-nine Articles" of the "Established Church of 
England." 

Where the Reformers dared attempt it, as in 
Switzerland, they fused the secular and spiritual 
authority together and established a theocracy. Where 
they dared not attempt this, they placed themselves 
sycophantly at the feet of secular rulers as in England 
and Prussia. 

According to the Reformers, the individual was the 
sole and all-sufficient judge in religious matters, 
amenable to no authority and quite competent to pass 
upon the law of God, to interpret and expound it, to 
admit or reject portions of it, according as his "reason" 
.should dictate. The leaders, it is true, confined this 
principle to revelation. But more logical minds soon 
extended it to other matters, and thus ambitious secular 
Tulers whose hearts were set on self-aggrandizement 
and the extension of their royal prerogatives, following 
the example of the "Reformers," set up their own 
private judgment as the supreme tribunal for the 
determination of all matters, ecclesiastical or political, 
^within their respective domains. The "Reformers" 
practically confined the so-called right of private judg- 
ment each one to himself and his followers, but, soon, 
too, they virtually surrendered it to the secular princes 
who protected them, with the result that there was 
instituted a policy which, as systematized and further 
carried out later on, culminated in the almost entire 
demolition of the institutions of constitutional govern- 
ment and of the safeguards of civil liberty in all 
Protestant countries and in most of the Catholic centres 
of Europe during the sixteenth century, the seventeenth 
and far on into the eighteenth. One of the most famous 
historians of modern times, Guizot, once prime minister 
of France, referring to this, says, in his Lectures on 
Civilization in Modern Europe: "The Emancipation 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 251 

( !) of the human mind (by the 'Reformation') and 
absolute monarchy triumphed simultaneously in 
Europe." Reserving the word "emancipation," Guizot's 
startling statement of the fact is true. 

During the one hundred and fifty years that followed 
the so-called Reformation, Europe went back as 
regards civil liberty almost to the absolutism of Caesar 
Augustus and his successors. All who have but glanced 
at the political history of Europe in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and later on, must know that the ancient liberties 
of the people were crushed and temporal rulers were 
virtual despots. Passing over England with its 
tyrannical sovereigns, its alternately sycophantic and 
rebellious Parliaments, its revolutions and restora- 
tions, it is only necessary to cite Protestant Prussia, 
Denmark and Sweden. Nor does the fact that the 
statement applies also to France and Spain weaken in 
the least the force of our argument. Their peoples 
were Catholic ; in Spain exclusively so, in France by a 
vast majority. Their rulers were professedly Catholics,, 
but quickly learning the lessons of the Reformers they 
were anything but Catholic in their political policy, 
and in their actions as regards both Church and State 
they were behind no other temporal sovereigns of the 
period in extending their royal prerogatives and 
breaking down all the ancient guarantees of constitu- 
tional liberty in their respective dominions, despite 
the remonstrances and protests of successive Sovereign 
Pontiffs of the Church. In belief they were Catholics; 
in the exercise of political power they acted according" 
to their own imperial "private judgment" defying alike 
the authority of constitutional civil law and that of the 
wise and sane teachings and rulings of the Church of 
God. As notable examples you will recall Francis I. 
of France, Charles V. of Spain, Prussia and the 
Netherlands — Catholics in belief, but Protestants ia. 
their political policy. Then came Louis XIV. of 
France whose famous dictum, "I am the State" was 
carried out by him to a despotic extent with regard 
also to ecclesiastical affairs. Albert of Brandenberg, 



252 



The Facts About Luther 



^who was called by his contemporaries "the Attila of 
the Reformation," pursued the same tyrannical course. 
He laid the foundation for the present kingdom of 
Prussia by sacrilegious plunderings and invasions, and 
established a despotism which has descended as a 
part of his patrimony to his successors on the throne 
of that country. In no region in Europe has despotism 
been so thoroughly systematized as to Church and 
State as in Prussia. 

"Thus, from the very outset of the Reformation 
onwards, that movement/' says a writer in the Am. 
Cath. Quarterly Review, "has not promoted civil liber- 
ty, but has retarded its progress. It taught no true prin- 
ciple respecting human rights and civil institutions that 
was not previously known and taught by the Catholic 
Church, her doctors and theologians, long years ago. 
It introduced principles of disorder and confusion, 
which inevitably led to anarchy on the one hand and 
tyranny on the other." 

No other result could be expected. In its funda- 
mental principle the Reformation denied authority, 
encouraged individualism, and promoted resistance to 
established government. When this centrifugal prin- 
ciple brought in insubordination, uprisings and popular 
revolts, the Reformers went to the other extreme and 
justified absolutism and the use of despotic means in 
the government of the people. So Protestantism, while 
tending inevitably to destroy popular rights, at the 
same time strengthened the arbitrary rule of the civil 
powers. 

"Wherever," Abp. Spalding observes, "the Refor- 
mation had penetrated and had uplifted its 'fiery cross/ 
protracted civil wars had everywhere marked its prog- 
ress and blood shed by brother armed against brother 
in fratricidal strife had everywhere stained the soil of 
Europe. Its career might have been traced by the 
dismantled or burning churches, the ruined monasteries 
and the smoking libraries, which it usually left behind 
it — the dismal trophies of its victory over the old 
religion. It had unsettled society, and it threatened 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 253 

the change or destruction of existing dynasties. No 
government any longer rested on a secure foundation ; 
what was strong to-day might be tottering to its fall 
to-morrow. And the new political order, which was 
to rise on the ruins of the old, however flattering soever 
to popular liberty were its promises, did not really 
result, at least in the vast majority of cases, in any 
greater extension of popular freedom." 

"The political tendency was, rather on the contrary, 
in the opposite direction. To strengthen their party, 
the reformers alm6st everywhere threw themselves, 
body and soul, into the arms, or rather under the feet 
of the new kings and princes who had acquired riches 
by the spoliation of the old Church, and had obtained 
increased political consequence and power by the pro- 
tection of the new gospelers. This protection generally 
consisted in that utter enslavement of religion, which 
so often results from the union of Church and State, 
and which is almost always a necessary result whenever 
the spiritual as well as the temporal power is lodged 
in the same hands. This was invariably the case 
wherever the Reformation triumphed in Europe." 

"The idle boast," observes Dr. Corcoran, "that politi- 
cal liberty has any connection with Martin Luther or 
his Reformation is sufficiently disproved by the fact 
that the liberties of Germany were effectually lost 
after Lutheranism had brought Germany under its 
influence, and nowhere more thoroughly than in Scan- 
dinavian Europe, where it became supreme without a 
rival." This was noticed more than two hundred years 
ago — 1692 — by an acute observer, Lord Molesworth, 
British Ambassador to the Court of Copenhagen, who 
not only observed the fact, but discovered its reason. 
"In the Roman Catholic religion," he says, "there is a 
resisting principle to absolute civil power from the 
division of authority with the head of the Church of 
Rome. But in the North, the Lutheran church is 
entirely subservient to the civil power and the whole 
of the northern people of Protestant countries have 
lost their liberties ever since they have changed their 



254 



The Facts About Luther 



religion for a better." (Quoted by Laing, Notes of a 
Traveler.) Mr. Hallam says: "It is one of the 
fallacious views of the Reformation, to which we have 
adverted in a former page, to fancy that it sprang 
from any notions of political freedom, in such a sense 
as we attach to the term." 

Luther, then, deserves no praise at the lips of any 
well-informed people for any influence his teachings 
may have exercised on civil or religious liberty. AIL 
the rhetoric expended in lauding him as a great libera- 
tor is worse than wasted. Every attempt to hold him 
up as the advocate of "freedom of conscience" and 
the promoter of "religious liberty" is intended either 
to lead the ignorant into error or confirm the delusions 
of existing prejudice. The enemies of God and His 
Church may glorify to their hearts' content the father 
and founder of an evangel that was not the Lord's, but 
the voice of all true history testifies that his only claim 
to remembrance rests on the fact that he pushed 
freedom of thought or assertion and pride of under- 
standing to an extreme limit by his revolutionary 
break with the Christian traditions and the established 
faith of fifteen centuries ; a merit, if we can call it such y 
w 7 hich he shares in common with every heretic, inno- 
vator, or reformer, who has troubled the Church of 
Christ, from Alexander, the Coppersmith, or Simon 
Magnus, down to George Rapp and Joe Smith, one 
of the few Americans who figured as a founder of a 
"new religion. " This has made him a hero forever 
with all infidels, materialists and unbelievers of every 
class, for they feel, and they are logically right, that he 
was their precursor, the first to make possible the over- 
throw of the Christian "superstition" and open the 
way for the triumph of reason and the new era of 
light that they imagine is to succeed Gospel darkness. 
But the most ardent devotees and admirers of this false 
hero must, if they are thoroughly acquainted with his 
teachings, admit that he knew nothing of religious 
liberty or freedom of conscience, much less believed 
in it, as we understand the phrase. No doubt, he used 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 255 

his private judgment freely enough, indeed with ra- 
tionalistic boldness, in regard to the Scriptures, but 
did he ever dream that it was a right belonging to all 
Christians, that the Protestant crowds whom he drew 
out with him from "the bondage of the Roman Anti- 
christ" possessed that right or that his own followers 
and fellow-religionists had the privilege of follow- 
ing their own private view in any religious matter 
whatever? His practical teaching was everlastingly 
to the contrary. 

All men were free to differ from the Pope, to reject 
his teaching, to curse him to the lowest depths, were 
«ven invited and encouraged to slay him like a wolf or 
robber, and wash their hands in his blood and that of 
his cardinals and other adherents, but they must not 
dare to differ from Luther, who never doubted his own 
personal inspiration and his own infallibility. Piously 
believing himself to be an authoritative judge, both of 
the meaning and of the authenticity of Scripture, did he 
not compel, with unrelenting rigor, all his friends and 
disciples to subscribe to his doctrinal views, and even 
to his capricious changes of opinion ? Did he not when 
some, like Carlstadt, Lemnius, Wickel, Agricola, 
Schwenkfeld and others, rebelled against the shameful 
slavery in which he held them, make them the objects 
of his relentless hate and enmity ? Did he not manifest 
his tyrannical and revengeful spirit against the peasants 
who differed from him when he urged the princes to 
"choke like mad dogs" the unhappy victims whom his 
own teachings had led into their evil courses? Did 
he not hate all who presumed to dissent from his 
opinions and follow a religious belief of their own and, 
as in the case of the Sacramentarians, Zurichers and 
others, did he not call them fanatics and factious sec- 
tarians, his sworn enemies, soul-murderers, damned 
blasphemers, lying mouths with hearts thoroughly pos- 
sessed by the devil? Did he not damn to hell's lowest 
depths his own dissenting Protestant brethren and did 
not the shocking condition of his intolerant mind make 
him look upon Jew and Catholic as such outlaws that 



256 The Facts About Luth.er 

judicial murder or private assassination were lawful 
and commendable in their case? 

But, it is useless to ask any more questions. The 
well-informed know that Luther's gospel in practise 
was the gospel of hate toward all who conscientiously 
refused to accept it. Menzel declares that "this in- 
tolerant hatred was as truly a part of the religion of the 
reformers as belief in the infallibility of the Church 
was for Catholics. ,, Is it any wonder that a gospel, 
good only inasmuch as it afforded a plausible shield 
and cover to its f ramer's bitter intolerance, should lead 
its upholders to persecution for conscience's sake and 
move its blind dupes to rioting, violence and the horrors 
of war? 

European history for the last three hundred years 
and more is little beside a record of the trampling 
under foot of almost every element of popular govern- 
ment and the imposition of the intolerable yoke of 
absolute despotism, with union of Church and State, 
on the necks of the suffering multitudes. In the good 
old times the people, as John Quincy Adams said of 
the Swiss cantons in a speech he once made at Buffalo, 
"loved liberty and therefore remained Catholic." Every 
important element of free government, popular repre- 
sentation, trial by jury, exemption from taxation 
without the consent of the governed, habeas corpus, 
and the great fundamental principle, that all power 
emanates from the people, were generally recognized 
and firmly established. All these blessings Catholics 
enjoyed for centuries before the Reformation was even 
dreamt of. With its advent seditions and tumults, 
civic factions and religious dissensions, distrust among 
those who had been hitherto united as brethren, ap- 
peared on all sides and paved the way for the omni- 
potence of the princes when absolute and uncontrolled 
despotism reigned on the one hand, and dreadful 
anarchy on the other. 

Scherr, an enemy of the Catholic Church, puts the 
blame on Luther for the absolute despotism and^ union 
of Church and State in every place in Germany where 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 257 

the Reformation obtained a solid footing. In his 
''German Culture,'' Third edition, page 260, he says: 
"Luther was the originator of the doctrine of uncon- 
ditional surrender to civil power. That two and five 
make seven he preached, that you know. But if the civil 
government should proclaim that two and five are 
eight, then you must believe it against your better 
knowledge and sense. That explains why so many 
German princes took so kindly to the servile policies 
of Lutheranism." 

That shifty position of Luther inaugurated a period 
of revolution on the one hand and tyranny and abso- 
lutism on the other, so that ever since governments and 
subjects are at all times at swords' points and can 
never regain their balance until the cause of the evil 
is removed. 

When in this age of ours revolution walks like a 
destroying angel among the nations of the earth and 
breathes death from its nostrils among the peaceful 
inhabitants thereof ; when the rulers upon their thrones 
are unsafe; when in this very land of liberty, calling 
itself Protestant, a Booth strikes down the most 
peaceful of men, the kindly Lincoln ; a Guiteau destroys 
the useful life of a Garfield ; when at the dawn of the 
twentieth century, a ruler chosen by his fellow citizens 
is murdered by the hands of the assassin Czolgosz 
while enjoying the quiet hospitality of a sovereign 
State ; and when you ask for the reason that produced 
such murderous outrages, we bid you turn to Luther 
and his rebellious teachings announced and embodied 
in the work styled falsely ''Reformation," producing 
the result of a deformation. Luther is its father, the 
sixteenth century its cradle and autocracy its pro- 
tector and high priest. 

If the world to-day rejoices in such liberty as it 
possesses, it is indebted, be it remembered, to no prin- 
ciple or tendency born of the religious upheaval of the 
-sixteenth century. Luther taught, preached and exem- 
plified in action the propriety and the need of civil and 
religious persecution. All his followers in rebellion, 



258 



The Facts About Luther 



Calvin, Beza, Gustavus Vasa and the rest, believed 
in and advocated the right and duty to persecute for 
civic and religious convictions. The policy of all the 
Reformers and of all the nations that became Protes- 
tant was from the beginning guided by this belief and 
was always marked by the immediate promulgation of 
laws against Catholics and dissenters. Civil and 
religious liberty came only after the Reformation 
movement had run its disastrous course. Freedom 
of conscience is a reaction rather than a result. 

It is well to remember that when Christ organized 
His Church He commissioned her not only to save 
each individual in the human family from the wrath 
to come, but He commanded her to teach the peoples 
in their organized capacity that God is Sovereign Lord 
over all, that righteousness exalteth a nation, and that 
the body politic, no less than the individual body, must 
be kept pure, undefiled and uncorrupted. This saving 
teaching the Catholic Church has always and unflinch- 
ingly proclaimed from her pulpit, in the confessional 
and in the schoolhouse. The nations that heeded the 
lesson and the governments that did not dispute the 
authority of the teacher became the powerful empires 
and kingdoms of the world, the framers of a system 
of jurisprudence which has never been excelled, the 
husbandmen of a civilization that was most glorious 
and enduring, the benefactors of humanity and the 
patrons of art and science — everything that adorns 
human life and makes for the uplift and ennobling of 
society. Those docile nations received their strength, 
their influence and their support from the Church, 
whose protector in turn they were. 

But in the sixteenth century a most disastrous 
calamity swept over Christendom. The old bonds of 
religion and authority were broken. Civil government 
became envious of God's Sovereignty and fortwith 
aided and manipulated a fearful and blithing heresy 
which demoralized national life, stimulated revolution 
and encouraged lawlessness. Then rebellion against 
the Church of Christ became a dogma of civil author- 



Luther a Fomentor of Rebellion 259 

ity and the aim of subjecting her to civil power was 
openly and shamelessly advocated. The new goddess 
of liberty, "the sovereignty of the people," with an ex- 
tinguished light in her hand, was proclaimed the Queen 
of the World, and, while the people were enticed by 
her coquettish ways to worship at her shrines the 
rulers forged the chains for the victims which they 
were to lead away captives. 

Ever since Luther's rebellion genius and learning, 
wit and satire, eloquence and poetry, sophistry and 
specious reasoning have been employed to ridicule, 
destroy and stamp out of the mind and action of men 
the principle of Divine and human authority. Prot- 
estant Christianity squeezed it out of its system; it 
has been driven out of domestic life ; and it is treated 
with scorn in governmental circles. Indeed there is 
to-day little or no regard for legitimate authority 
either in the home or in organized society. The 
authority entrusted to the head of the family is almost 
entirely discarded. The person of the chief magistrate 
of City, State or Nation is treated with disrespect and 
the tribunal of justice is hailed with contempt. Majesty 
is no longer attached to law. This denial of authority 
has demoralized all conception of respect for superi- 
ors, for property rights, for individual liberty and the 
very foundation stones of the national structure are 
being moved one by one, so that the structure itself 
is in danger of tottering and of falling asunder. The 
general aversion to the guidance of legitimate and 
Divinely established law, which Luther's loose and 
immoral teachings introduced into the world, and 
which have come down to our day, must be removed 
if domestic happiness and national prosperity would 
bless the land, its homes and its people. It is only 
when men render to God the things that are God's 
and to Caesar the things that are Caesar's that brother- 
ly love, a common feeling of kinship and a readiness 
to stand shoulder to shoulder, one for all and all for 
one, forming one powerful army, that the uplift, ad- 
vancement and sanctification of mankind shall bless 



260 



The Facts About Luther 



the earth. "Unless the Lord," as the Holy Spirit says, 
"rules the city in vain rule they whcf rule." 

Luther and his Protestantism, on the contrary, pro- 
claimed the false doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings 
and the unequalled absolutism of rulers and, as might 
be expected, freedom was destroyed, sedition promoted 
' c and the security not only of all kinds of property but 
even of human life was endangered. 

When we consider Luther's teaching and practical 
behavior and that of his fellow instigators of rebellion 
regarding civil and religious liberty and see how they 
struck at the free institutions brought down from the 
Middle Ages, only to introduce in their stead a reign 
of centralized despotism from which we are but slowly 
recovering, we may well and justly say with the Protes- 
tant Hallam: "It is strange to see men professing all 
the time our modern creed of charity and toleration 
extol these sanguinary spirits of the sixteenth century." 
(Const. History. Vol. I, ch. Ill, p. 147.) 



CHAPTER VIII. 



Luther on Free-Will and Liberty of Conscience. 

WHEN God created man He united to a material 
body a spiritual soul endowed with faculties that 
not only proclaim his dignity and nobility, but tell him 
that he is to be eternally happy or miserable according 
to the good or bad use he makes of these gifts in this 
world. One of the principal perfections with which 
man is endowed is the faculty of free-will. After his 
own existence, there is no truth he realizes more vividly 
in his inner consciousness than the possession of free- 
will. Through this faculty man's soul is enabled, 
according to its liking, to do what it pleases, act or not 
act, decide in such or such a manner, and among 
different impressions, choose one and attach itself 
to it in such wise that it becomes insensible to every 
other, as occurs so often in the phenomenon of ab- 
straction, where the mind, exclusively occupied with 
one object, hears nothing, feels nothing, sees nothing 
that is passing around it. 

This faculty of free-will differentiates man from 
all other creatures that surround him. Whilst matter 
is blindly submissive to the action of external agencies 
and other creatures obey a superior immutable will, 
which constrains them always and everywhere to 
execute its commands, it is man's God-given privilege 
to think, reason and will freely. His soul acts or does 
not act; it wishes or it does not wish; it chooses or 
does not choose; while doing one thing it perceives 
perfectly well that it might do another instead. If 
the action is good, the soul experiences joy; if bad, 
remorse; for it feels that it is free not to act 
improperly. There is no one among us unacquainted 
with the sentiment of pleasure or pain, which follows 
the commission of a good or a bad action. This 
sentiment we could not experience if we had not been 
free to act as we choose; we could not then merit 



262 



The Facts About Luther 



cither recompense or chastisement. Without free-will 
we should move as mere machines. AH things 
would be equal, since all things would be compulsory. 
In this condition it would be absurd and unjust to 
punish vice and reward virtue; or rather, there would 
be neither good nor evil, neither vice nor virtue. 
Accordingly, God would be unjust in rewarding some 
and punishing others; but if God were unjust, He 
would no longer be God; He would no longer be 
anything; the world would be an effect without a 
cause. Such is the abyss, Gaume tells us, into which 
all fall after a few steps if they deny the free-will 
of the soul. 

The liberty or freedom from interior necessity or 
compulsion we enjoy as thinking and reasonable beings 
is the subjective basis of all moral, religious, civil 
and social order. On this inestimable privilege of 
self-determination the Catholic Church has always 
laid great stress and has ever uniformly and con- 
sistently considered it as the foundation of all man's 
worship of God and all communication with Him. 
In His merciful designs He willed "that all men be 
saved and come to a knowledge of the truth." To 
help them to fulfill His will and to acquire eternal 
happiness, He gives His grace to all without excep- 
tion. In the bestowal of His heavenly assistance to 
man God leaves him entirely free to receive or to" 
reject it. Man's freedom of choice ever remains in 
this life his own peculiar possession to do with it 
whatsoever he pleases and select for himself a right 
or a wrong course regarding his eternal destiny. 
Whilst God is ever ready to assist man to arrive at a 
wholesome and unfettered decision, yet He will not 
overrule, dominate, or derange the will of man to 
deprive it of its freedom of choice between good and 
evil. God made man without his co-operation, but, 
as St. Augustine says, "He will not save without it." 
Man in co-operating with God's grace does not thereby 
lose his freedom of will. Under the action of His 
grace man retains all his power of freedom and, 



Free-Will and Liberty of Conscience 263 

therefore, all the efforts he makes in the salvation 
of his soul are "as an act organically one, effected 
equally by God's grace and by his free co-operation/ ' 
"Free-will," as St. Augustine aptly remarks, "is not 
destroyed because it is assisted by grace ; it is assisted 
because it has not been destroyed." 

To this basic truth of sane reason, the pillar of all 
religious belief, Luther was decidedly and unalterably 
antagonistic. It mattered not to him that the vast 
majority of the human race believed in the freedom of 
the human will and manifested on every page of his- 
tory since the world began acknowledgemnt of the 
sense of duty and the force of the requirements of the 
moral order. In spite of the general belief of mankind, 
the teaching of Scripture and the docrine of the Cath- 
olic Church on man's power of choice for what is good, 
he gradually came to hold and to advocate that man 
does not possess freedom of will, and is, therefore, in- 
capable of either merit or guilt in the sight of his Cre- 
ator. Moving along the old lines of his distaste for 
good works and for so-called self-righteousness, he 
came to exaggerate the results of original sin with re- 
gard to doing what is good and imagined that the fall 
of our first parents warped and obliterated the freedom 
of moral choice by giving rise to concupiscence and |he 
movements of inordinate passion. The false condi- 
tion he formed of the corruption of human nature 
by original sin and concupiscence led him on to the 
denial of all liberty on man's part for doing what is 
good and to the adoption of the idea of "the imputation 
of the merits of Christ as a cloak to cover and hide 
all iniquity." The Catholic doctrine, which holds that 
free-will had not been destroyed by original sin, and 
that in one who acts aright, it is not interfered with 
by God's grace, he thought "did not allow to free-will 
its full rights since it ostensibly does all and obliterates 
every free deed in the domain of salvation." Original 
sin, which the Catholic Church attributes to the vol- 
untary weakness of man and the artifice of the 



264 The Facts About Luther 



seducer, he had, as we shall show further on, the 
temerity to attribute to the thrice Holy God. 

In scanning Luther's works issued from 1516 to 
1524, we frequently discover certain emphatic state- 
ments on the question of man's free-will, which give 
a clear insight into his trend of thought and show 
plainly his intention to develop his new theories and 
to make them the core and kernel of all his teaching. 
From out the vast number of the false assertions he 
made during this period we present the following: 
"Everything happens of necessity"; "Man, when he 
does what is evil, is not master of himself"; "Man 
does evil because God ceases to work in him"; 
"By virtue of His nature God's ineluctable concursus 
determines everything, even the most trivial," hence 
"inevitable necessity" compels us in "all that we do 
and everything that happens" ; "God alone moves and 
impels all that He has made," nay, "He decrees all 
things in advance by His infallible will" including 
the inevitable damnation of those who are damned. 
These assertions indicate clearly and unmistakably 
his position and feeling regarding the doctrine of 
human will and the liberty of the thinking being. 
Although his views are as false as they are blas- 
phemous, they surprise none familiar with his unscrip-^ 
tural teaching on justification by faith alone, which 
totally deprived human action of all moral character 
and mankind of all moral responsibility. In order to 
give some appearance of logical coherence to his new 
system of religion based on the general corruption of 
human nature due to original sin, it is easy to under- 
stand how naturally he came to deny the freedom of 
the human will, to excuse human culpability and to 
minimize human responsibility. In his estimation 
man's will was totally depraved and, therefore, pos- 
sessed no self-determining power. Fathering this view 
of man's will, which destroys all moral liberty, he thus 
revived and reproduced in a somewhat new form the 
ancient Gnostic and Manichean error and forthwith 
made this teaching the fundamental doctrine of his 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 265 

new system of belief. So confident and assured was 
he of the soundness and correctness of his position 
regarding man's will that he wanted none to attack 
or dispute his favorite teaching, for to do so "would/' 
as he says, "place the knife at his throat." 

To those who have been taught all along that Luther 
was the one great champion of human liberty, it must 
come as a shocking surprise to learn for the £rst 
time that their hero persistently denied free-will in 
man and considered it, to use his own words, "a 
mere empty name." It is true that at times in some 
of his practical writings and instructions he makes »t 
appear as though the Christian were free, with the 
help of grace, to follow the path of salvation. He 
expresses this view in his exposition of the Penitential 
Psalms, the Our Father and the Ten Commandments. 
In his sermons on the Decalogue he even calls the 
opinion "godless," that any man is forced by necessity 
to sin and not rather led to commit it by his own 
inclination. "All that God has made is good and thus 
all natural inclination is to what is good." In his 
tract "On the Freedom of the Christian Man" written 
in October, 1520, he teaches that the Christian is "free 
lord of all and subject to none." Thus, in such works 
as he intended for the furtherance of the Christian 
life, he speaks to the faithful as though they still 
enjoyed moral freedom of the will and liberty of 
choice. But when we glance at his "Commentary on 
Romans," the "Resolutions" on the Leipzig Disputa- 
tion and the "Assertio omnium articulorum," written 
in defense of his condemned propositions, we find 
his language is the very reverse of that used in his 
sermons, expositions and practical writings. These 
works do not pass over his denial of free-will in 
silence. They are most outspoken in opposition to 
free-will and contain in substance all the strictures 
embodied later on in his treatise entitled "Slave Will** 
In one of the works just named Luther says: "The 
world has allowed itself to be seduced by the flattering 
doctrine of free-will which is pleasing to nature." If 



266 



The Facts About Luther 



any point of his teaching, then certainly that of the 
"captive will" is to be accounted one of the "most 
sublime mysteries of our faith and religion, which 
only the godless know not, but to which the true 
Christian holds fast." (Assertio, etc., pp. 95, 158.) 

This statement of Luther shows how close to his 
heart was his pet teaching on the absence of free-will 
in man. But whilst he and many of his ardent fol- 
lowers were satisfied with the strange pronouncement, 
there were millions who did not consider his "captive 
will" as anything but degrading and demoralizing. 
From the beginning its announcement and tendency 
to unsettle moral conditions were discerned by the 
enlightened in the community and the prevailing con- 
victions of humanity resented the insult embodied in 
the teaching. Opposition was met with in almost all 
quarters. Many, even in the wide circle of his own 
readers, were startled at his bold attacks on free-will 
and not a few, considering his inconsistency on the 
point, now admitting and again denying the faculty of 
man's freedom, and weighing the consequences of his 
final adoption of the "captive will" as one of the "most 
sublime mysteries of his faith and religion," aban- 
doned his cause and refused longer to be associated 
with his movement. The promulgation of his views 
on free-will caused widespread scandal and opened 
the way to the licentious for the commission of th^ 
grossest violations of law divine and civil. 

"Capito," Grisar says, "declared himself openly 
against Luther's theories concerning the absolute 
enslavement of the will. The Humanist Mosellanus 
(Peter Schade), a great admirer of the Wittenbergers, 
spoke so strongly at Leipzig against the propositions 
deduced from Luther's teaching on predestination to 
hell, that the latter was warned of what had occurred. 
Many who had previously been favorably disposed 
to Luther, were repelled by his teaching on the 
enslaved will and fell away then or later, for instance, 
the learned naturalist George Agricola." 

Luther during a period of seven or eight years 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 26? 

labored with all his energy by writing and preaching 
to destroy in the hearts of the people the traditional 
teaching of the Church on the important question of 
free-will, justification and pardon. His efforts were 
not without results among the ill-informed, the lovers 
of novelty and the rebellious. The confusion and 
disorder, which followed everywhere as a consequence 
of his demoralizing teachings, threatened to under- 
mine the very foundations of society itself. Among 
the vast number who grew alarmed at the frightful 
condition noticeable on all sides was Erasmus, whom 
Luther endeavored by flattery to win over to his 
side and whom he called the "Glory and Hope of 
Germany." This man was a prolific author and wrote 
in the most fluent Latin. He enjoyed great fame 
in the domain of learning and, by common consent, 
was the first authority of the day on classical and 
critical studies. Justly renowned for his general 
literary culture and familiarity with religious and 
historical questions, he was just the man the occasion 
required to hold Luther up to the world in his true 
colors and help to diminish the corruption then every- 
where rampant on account of the Reformer's loose 
doctrine. Though timid by nature and preferring any 
other task to attacking Luther, he launched forth in 
1524, at Basle, his work, "De liber arbitrio diatribe/ 9 
which administered a severe blow to Luther and 
enlightened all on the fallacy and dangers of the 
religion of the "enslaved will." Many cultured lay- 
men, such as Duke George of Saxony, Ulrich Zasius 
and Martin Lipsius, expressed their approbation of 
Erasmus' work in defense of free-will. Melanchthon, 
Luther's closest friend, praised the moderation with 
which the champion of free-will treated the subject. 
Even Luther himself admitted the kindness displayed 
by Erasmus in this work. According to Vedder, a 
non-Catholic writer of our own day, "this great 
scholar (Erasmus) had little difficulty in pointing out 
Luther's errors and in showing that his doctrine of 
the will is incompatible with reason, experience and 



268 The Facts About Luther 



the general tenor of Scripture/' In a tone of studied 
moderation and without a trace of bitterness, 
"Erasmus," to use the words of Grisar, "dwelt with 
emphasis and success on the fact, that according to 
Luther, not merely every good, but also every evil 
must be referred to God; this was in contradiction 
with the nature of God and was excluded by His 
Holiness. According to Luther, God inflicted eternal 
damnation on sinners, whereas they, in so far as 
they were not free agents, could not be held respon- 
sible for their sins; what ^Luther had advanced 
demanded that God should act contrary to His eternal 
Goodness and Mercy; it would also follow that 
earthly laws and penalties were superfluous, because 
without free-will no one could be responsible; finally, 
the doctrine involved the overthrow of the whole moral 
order." 

In pointing out the practical difficulties of Luther's 
reckless assertions, Erasmus called on the heresiarch 
to reply to his arguments, which' may be briefly summed 
up as follows: "If the will of man is not free to 
choose the good who will try' to lead a good life? Will 
not everyone find a ready excuse for all sins and 
vices by saying: I could not help falling? What is 
the meaning of God's law, if the people for whom it 
was made cannot obey? The whole legislation of 
God becomes a farce and a mockery if man has not 
the power to observe it. How, finally, can God punish 
or reward those who cannot choose between good and 
evil, but merely do what they must?" These were 
practical questions, but Luther never attempted to 
deal with them seriously. 

"Erasmus, in defending free-will," writes A. Taube, 
a Protestant theologian, "fights for responsibility, duty, 
guilt and repentance, ideas which are essential to 
Christian piety. He vindicates the capacity of the 
natural man for salvation, without which the identity 
between the old and the new man cannot be main- 
tained, and without which the new life imparted by 
God's grace ceases to be a result of moral effort and 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 269 

becomes rather the last term of a magical process. 
He combats the fatalism which is incompatible with 
Christian piety and which Luther contrived to avoid 
only by his want of logic; he vindicates the moral 
character of the Christian religion, to which, from 
the standpoint of Luther's theology, it was impossible 
to do justice." (A. Taube, "Luther's Lehre uber die 
Freiheit, etc./' Gottingen, 1901, p. 46.) 

Although the work of Erasmus reached Luther in 
September, 1524, it was not until late in the following 
year that a reply was issued. The troubles of the 
Peasants' War and his marriage to a kidnapped nun 
engrossed his attention to the exclusion of almost 
everything besides. He was inclined at first to treat 
his opponent's attack with contempt, but when Kath- 
erine Von Bora represented to him "that his foes 
might see in his obstinate silence an admission of 
defeat," he began his reply and composed it, as he 
himself admits, in excessive haste. To this work he 
gave the title "De servo arbitrio"—'On the enslaved 
will" which was borrowed from a misunderstood 
saying of St. Augustine. In this famous volume, 
Luther defined his position on the absence of free-will 
and expressed his matured convictions that man is 
absolutely devoid of freedom of choice, even in the 
performance of works not connected with salvation 
and moral acts generally. Luther was very proud of 
this work. He thought it was unanswerable and defied 
Erasmus and even the devil to refute it. Notwith- 
standing the high estimate he conceived of this treatise, 
it is well-known that many in his own day regretted 
its issue, for as Kostlin-Kawerau remarks, "it was 
a stumbling block to his followers, and attempts were 
made to explain it away by all the arts of violent 
exegesis." Kattenbusch says, in the preface of his 
study on this work, that "quite rightly it caused great 
scandal and wonder." Vedder, another Protestant 
author, says: "Though this is by far the most decent 
of all his controversiaj writings, his 'Slave Will* 
cannot be commended to controversialists for their 



270 



The Facts About Luther 



imitation. He cannot deny himself the pleasure of 
an occasional mean fling, and a bitter epithet bursts 
forth from him now and then, as if it were unawares, 
while a tone of ill-suppressed rage is heard through 
the whole." (Vedder, p. 230.) 

The tone of this book is indeed violent, but, what 
is worse, the doctrine it advances is debasing and 
wantonly demoralizing. As one wades through its 
dismal pages, it is impossible to refrain from asking 
how any man claiming, as Luther did, to be a 
religious reformer, could pen anything so revolting and 
so shocking to the common sense of the Christian 
heart as the wild, reckless and unfounded assertions 
that fill it from cover to cover. 

It is not possible in a chapter like this to give a full 
review of Luther's work on "Slave Will!' To set 
forth completely the whole theory of his enslaved will 
would require volumes. In the limited space at our 
disposal we can only offer the reader a few extracts, 
which embody his teachings and are fairly represen- 
tative of all the views he held on the subject. In 
order to remove any suggestion of bias in the matter, 
we quote the non-Catholic Vedder's findings. "Luther," 
he says, "grounds this doctrine of the will in the 
nature of God." He then quotes the following from the 
Reformer's work on "Slave Will" : "The omnipotence 
of God makes it, that the wicked cannot evade the 
motion and action of God, but, being of necessity sub- 
ject to it, he yields. . . God cannot suspend His omni- 
potence on account of his aversion, nor can the wicked 
man change his aversion. Wherefore it is that he must 
of necessity continue to sin and err, until he be 
amended by the Spirit of God. To the objection that 
this contradicts our ideas of goodness and justice, 
Luther declares that whatever God wills is right, purely 
because He wills it; God is that being, for whose 
will no cause or reason is to be assigned as a rule 
or standard by which it acts; seeing that nothing is 
superior or equal to it, but it is itself the rule of 
all things. For if it acted by any rule or standard, 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 271 

or from any cause or reason, it would no longer be 
the will of God. Wherefore, what God wills is there- 
fore not right because He so wills. A cause and 
reason are assigned for the will of the creature, but 
not for the will of the Creator, unless you set up, 
over Him, another Creator." "Luther thus treats us," 
says Vedder, "to the ultimate absurdity of his system, 
a God who is wholly irrational, and acts without any 
reason, or else He could not be God." Is not this 
evidence enough to brand Luther as an out and out 
enemy of God and man, and rank him among the 
vilest teachers the world ever produced? 

At the end of his work on "Slave Witt" the 
irreverent author sums up all he had written and 
appeals to God's rule and to His unchangeable predes- 
tination of all things, even the most insignificant; 
likewise to the empire of the devil and his power 
over spirits. In the most . shameful manner and 
without a blush, he revives the old Persian idea of 
two eternal principles of good and evil contending 
continually for the possession of man. With a slight 
variation of the ancient debasing doctrine of Manes, 
he declares that man is the merely passive subject of 
a contest between God and the devil. To make his 
meaning evident, he, to the amazement of all, com- 
pares man to a beast of burden who is compelled to 
move in whatever direction the rider may require. 

"Man," he says, "is like a horse. Does God leap 
into the saddle? The horse is obedient and accom- 
modates itself to every movement of the rider and 
goes whither he wills it. Does God throw down the 
reins ? Then Satan leaps upon the back of the animal, 
which bends, goes and submits to the spurs and 
caprices of its new rider. The will cannot choose its 
rider and cannot kick against the spur that pricks it. 
It must go on and its very docility is a disobedience 
or a sin. The only struggle possible is between the 
two riders, who dispute the momentary possession of 
the steed, and, then, is fulfilled the saying of the 
Psalmist: 1 am become like a beast of burden/ 



272 The Facts About Luther 



Let the Christian, then, know that God foresees nothing 
contingently, but that he foresees, proposes and acts 
from His internal and immutable will. This is the 
thunderbolt that shatters and destroys free-will. Hence 
it comes to pass that whatever happens, happens 
according to the irreversible decrees of God. There- 
fore, necessity, not free-will, is the controlling principle 
of our conduct. God is the author of what is evil 
in us as well as of what is good, and, as He bestows 
happiness on those who merit it not, so also, does He 
damn others who deserve not their fate." (De Servo 
Arbitrio, in op. lat. 7, 113 seq.) 

This parable summarizes the whole of Luther's 
teaching on the vital and all-important subject of man's 
free-will. It expresses in the most deliberate manner 
his matured conviction on the question; and so sure 
is he of the soundness of his view that he declares 
it to be the very core and basis of religion. "Without 
this doctrine of the enslaved will, the supernatural 
character of Christianity cannot," so he says, "be 
maintained; the work of redemption falls to the 
ground, because whoever sets up free-will cheats 
Christ of all His merit; whoever advocates free-will 
brings death and Satan into his soul." "To me," x he 
says in another passage, "the defense of this truth 
is a matter of supreme and eternal importance. I 
am convinced that life itself should be set at stake 
in order to preserve it. It must stand though the 
whole world be involved thereby in strife and tumult, 
nay, even fall into ruins." 

The last words in Luther's book on "Slave Will," 
Grisar says, "even exceed the rest in confidence and 
the audacity of his demand that his work should be 
accepted without question almost takes away one's 
breath. 'In this book I have not merely theorized; 
I have set up definite propositions and these I shall 
defend; no one will I permit to pass judgment on 
them and I advise all to submit to them. May the 
Lord Whose cause is here vindicated,' he says, 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 273 

addressing himself to Erasmus, 'give you light to 
make of you a vessel to His honor and glory. Amen.' 

No one has ever attempted to deny the existence, 
authenticity and authorship of this book. Some of 
Luther's admirers, however, have endeavored to 
defend the grotesque theses advanced in this famous 
work and give them a meaning altogether foreign to 
their expression, development and spirit. But all their 
arts of "violent exegesis" cannot hide or remove from 
the pages of this work the hard, offensive, soul- 
destroying teaching it formulates. No amount of 
enthusiasm for Luther's standpoint . can ever wipe 
out the degrading doctrine of despair announced 
within its covers. To apologize for the detestable 
teaching by claiming that "it was essentially Lutheran" 
will never down the scandal and wonder it gave rise 
to. All who are honest and fearless of consequences 
must admit in frankest terms, that Luther's teach- 
ing on free-will, as expounded in his book, and 
explicitly making God the author of man's evil 
thoughts and deeds, cannot but lend a mighty force 
to the passions and justify the grossest violations of 
the moral law. Indeed, the enemy of souls, as 
Anderdon remarks, "could not inspire a doctrine more 
likely to effect his wicked designs than Luther's teach- 
ing on the enslavement of the human will." 

When we stop to reflect on Luther's favorite 
parable, we cannot help asking ourselves what sort 
of a man was he and what did he think would likely 
be the effect on the simple and untrained mind of 
his singular doctrine and its concomitant despair? Is 
not the man portrayed in his teaching? Does not his 
teaching show the confusion of his mind and the 
lack of an exact logical system? And does not his 
whole theory, born of personal motives and fashioned 
to suit his own state of soul, show clearly enough 
that it could not be approved of heaven or help to 
righteousness? Think of what this erratic man, with 
all his presumptuous belief in himself, says, and then 
judge for yourselves whether or not his doctrine on 



274c The Facts About Luther 



the enslaved will should become, as he wished, the 
common conviction of all the faithful, which none can 
do without, and which he made the very basis of 
his new Christianity. What man in his senses would 
subscribe to such an audacious demand and accept 
such a singular innovation without questioning its 
inconsistency, obscurity and confusion? When he 
says, "If you happen to have Satan for a rider, you 
must go as Sataji wills and there is no help for it," 
does he not debase man and make him a mere tool, 
a machine, an automaton? Likening him to a "beast 
of burden," does he not maintain that man is utterly 
powerless "by reason of his fallen nature" to lead 
a godly life, and merit by the practice of virtue the 
rewards of eternal happiness? Does he not say: "It 
is written on the hearts of men that there is no freedom 
of will," that "all takes place in accordance with 
inexorable necessity," and that even "were free-will 
offered him, he should not care to have it?" But 
does not all this contradict the Spirit of God when 
speaking in the Book of Ecclesiasticus He says: 
"Before man is life and death, good and evil; that 
which he shall choose shall be given him." 

Luther, unfortunately for himself and others, would 
have none of this teaching and though it is God's 
own doctrine, he, in his extraordinary self-confidence, 
boldly and blasphemously maintained that man has not 
the power to choose between "life and death, good and 
evil." Thus "the law of liberty," as St. James 
declares, "the law by which all shall be judged," is 
ruthlessly and brutally brushed aside by the arbitrary 
pronouncement of this deluded man to make way for 
the spread of his false, degrading and fanciful concept 
of liberty, the liberty of the horse bridled, bitted and 
spurred, the horse that must obey his rider, which- 
ever of the two contending riders represented in his 
profane parable occupies the saddle. "It is," he says, 
"either God or the devil that rules; man has no 
freedom of choice and is absolutely devoid of respon- 
sibility for his acts. Having lost free-will, man cannot 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 275 

observe the precepts of the Decalogue; he cannot 
master his passions ; he must sin as long as he lives." 
"As God pushes him, then he does something not 
through free will, but by the power of God; and 
when the devil pushes him, then he does something 
not through free will, but by the power of Satan who 
takes possession of him. When the devil takes posses- 
sion of some man or leaves him, it is only by that 
arbitrary will by which God wills that a certain 
number shall be damned and a certain number shall 
be saved. Then the conclusion is simply this: that 
those who are to be saved are to be saved without 
any regard to their good works and that they mill 
be saved; that there is nothing in heaven or earth 
that can keep them from being saved. Why, then, 
should they undertake to do anything themselves? It 
matters not to them ; they will be saved anyway what- 
ever they do. And, as for those unfortunate ones 
who are left behind and are to be damned, how idle 
for them to kick against the arbitrary decree! They 
must perish anyway, and as they must perish, they 
ought to say to themselves : 'Let us eat and drink and 
be merry for to-morrow we die.' " 

The foregoing is only a part of the infamous and 
degrading teaching propounded without a blush in 
Luther's work on the enslavement of the human will. 
There is much besides in this scandalous volume of 
such a despicable nature that we would be ashamed 
to present it to the public unless forced to do so in 
the interests of truth. This, like almost all of Luther's 
writings, is full of pitch and, in reading his works, 
one is bound to look well to his hands lest they be 
soiled. 

Luther's teaching on the loss of free-will was, on 
account of its novelty and the license it encouraged, 
soon taken up and zealously advocated by many who 
loved error rather than truth. Among those who 
advocated the oracle of the fiery apostle, we will name 
only a few of his most prominent supporters. 

Melanchthon comes first in order. He was Luther's 



276 The Facts About Luther . 



mild, gentle and most obsequious friend. In the 
December of 1521, he published a work entitled "Loci 
Communes Rerum Theologicarum" which was the tech- 
nical exposition of Lutheranism at that time. In this 
work the disciple of Luther gives clear and full expres- 
sion to his master's teaching. "AH that happens," 
Melanchthon says there, "happens of necessity in 
accordance with the Divine predestination ; there is no 
such thing as freedom of the will." As might be 
expected, he inveighed in his work against the Cath- 
olic theologians, whom he accused of having borrowed 
from philosophy and imparted into Christianity the 
impious doctrine of liberty, a doctrine absolutely 
opposed to Scripture. It is, also, to the philosophy 
of Plato, according to him, that we are indebted for 
the equally pernicious word, "reason." It is of interest 
to remark that the author of this work later on, when 
freed from the tyranny of his master, came to a more 
correct view, making no secret of his rejection of 
Luther's determinism. 

Another promoter of Luther's doctrine on free-will 
was Ulrich Zwingle, who in the course of time was 
denounced by the friends of the Reformer as a 
"false prophet, a mountebank, a hog, a heretic." This 
advocate of the new doctrine of Luther was ordained 
for the diocese of Constance, Switzerland, in 1506. 
From the opening of his career he was noted for his 
light-mindedness, frivolity and slavery to sensual 
pleasures. When his familiarity with a woman of 
notorious and profligate character became public, he 
was obliged to resign his care of souls. In 1522 he 
had the audacity to write to his bishop to demand a 
general permission for priests to marry. In this 
letter he candidly acknowledged his many and griev- 
ous lapses. "Your Lordship," he writes, "knows 
very well how disgraceful my conduct heretofore has 
been and how my crimes have been the ruin and 
scandal of many." The bishop, of course, was power- 
less in the matter, but Zwingle, nothing daunted, dis- 
pensed himself and took to himself a widow, one 



Free-Will and Liberty of Conscience 277 

Anna Reinhard, with whom he had lived for many 
years, without leave of either Church or State. A 
character of this sort was prepared to lend himself 
to the propagation of any protective doctrine no matter 
how immoral. Following the lines of his leader he 
wrote a brutal book, "On Providence,' 3 in which he 
repeats at every page that "God leads and forces man 
into evil; that he makes use of the creature to produce 
injustice, and that yet he does not sin; for the law 
which makes an act sinful does not exist for God, 
and, moreover, He always acts from right and 
supremely holy intentions. The creature, on the con- 
trary, although acting involuntarily under the Divine 
guidance, sins, because he violates the law and acts 
from damnable motives. " Without a blush this 
"Reformer" brutally declares : "I will indulge my 
sinful desires and, whatever I shall do, God is the 
author of it. It is by the ordination of God that 
this man is a parricide and that man is an adulterer." 
Such was the teaching and practice of the man whom 
his friends call the "Eagle of Helvetia" and praise as 
"full of noblest chivalry." 

Another of the wretched number who lent assist- 
ance to spread the harrowing teaching on the loss of 
free-will in man, was John Calvin, who was born at 
Nayon, France, in 1509, three years after Zwingle's 
ordination. He, too, studied for the Church, but was 
obliged to leave the seminary early on account of his 
immoral and revolutionary proclivities. After advo- 
cating Luther's teachings at the Sorbonne, Paris, he 
departed in 1534 for Basle, where he wrote his 
"Institutes of the Christian Religion." Later on he 
betook himself to Geneva where he gathered disciples 
and set up his special brand of worship in 1538. Over- 
bearing, cruel and despotic in character, he meted 
out the direst vengeance to all who dared to con- 
trovert or assail his false preachments. His barbarous 
treatment of Balsec, Ameaux, Gruet, Gentilis, and 
Servetus, the latter of whom he seized and burned 
at the stake, himself an eye-witness to the holocaust, 



278 The Facts Aeout Luther 



is a well-known fact of history. Such was the man 
who himself was branded with the infamous mark 
of the galleys for having committed a crime of so 
shameful a character that it cannot be named here. 
This vindictive and licentious ally of Luther evolved 
from the teachings of his master the gruesome system 
of an absolute predestination by which God from all 
eternity has irrevocably destined some to goodness and 
eternal happiness, and others to evil and eternal misery. 
He taught that "free-will no longer had an existence" 
and that "God was the author of man's sins." "For 
reasons," he says, "incomprehensible to our ignorance, 
God irresistibly impels man to violate His laws, that 
His inspirations turn to evil the heart of the wicked, 
and that man falls, because God has thus ordered it." 
These are beautiful assertions to fall from the lips of 
one who claimed to be a reformer. Satan himself 
could hardly formulate a dogma more designed to 
insult God and deceive the souls of men. No wonder 
that the Protestant minister, Mr. Pouzait, writing of 
Calvin's theological system, declared it to be "the most 
horrible ever conceived by any human being." His 
death was as sad as his life was indecent. 

The last one we shall refer to here who espoused 
Luther's views on free-will was the mellifluous 
Theodore of Beza. When Calvin died in 1564, in the * 
fifty-sixth year of his age, after a life of tyranny 
over both the bodies and souls of men, Beza, who 
was his disciple and who wrote his history, succeeded 
to the leadership of the gloomy religionism which 
his master introduced into Geneva as a substitute for 
the Catholic religion. Of this man, Hesshuss writes: 
"Who will not be astonished at the incredible impu- 
dence of this monster, whose scandalous life is known 
throughout France?" This estimate sums up all we 
care to know about him. His teaching, like his life, 
is horrible and disgusting. Wishing to explain abso- 
lute predestination, which Calvin had taught as an 
incontrovertible but profoundly mysterious dogma, 
he boldly "affirms that God has created the largest 



Free-Will and Liberty of Conscience 279 

portion of men only with the object of making use 
of them to do evil ; and then gives as a reason for it, 
that God, in the creation of the universe, designed to 
manifest His justice and His mercy; but how could 
this end he attained with creatures who, remaining 
innocent, would need no pardon, nor merit any punish- 
ment ; God then ordains that they should sin ; He saves 
some and here His compassion is seen; He condemns 
others, and behold His justice. The end that God 
proposes to Himself is evidently just and holy; conse- 
quently the means must be the same." Thus the 
disciple goes farther in blasphemy than the master, 
but, like all others in rebellion in his day, Beza makes 
the action of justification and spiritual regeneration a 
mere mechanical movement of man under the irre- 
sistible influence of God. In his system, as in that 
of all the other reformers, there is no room, as in Cath- 
olic doctrine for casting off the degradation of sin, 
freeing one's self from the tyranny of passion and the 
corrupt love of creatures, and following in the foot- 
steps of Jesus Christ and in the way of His Command- 
ments. 

In presenting to our readers a condensed and neces- 
sarily imperfect summary of facts regarding the 
teaching ^nd standing of the chief lights of the 
Reformation, we would not be understood as wishing 
to reflect upon the character or conduct of the present 
professors of Lutheran and Calvinistic doctrines, many 
of whom are men estimable for their civic virtues. 
It is not our fault that the truth of history will not 
warrant a better showing for those who played a public 
and conspicuous part in the great religio-political 
drama of the sixteenth century. Their life and acts 
and teachings are all matters of public and official 
record, open to closest scrutiny and investigation. The 
facts cannot be concealed and all who know these 
must honestly confess that the work of the leaders 
of the Reformation was one of sorrowful darkness, 
despair and disintegration. One and all were enemies 
of the Church God established for all men and for 



280 The Facts About Luther 



all time. They labored under the hallucination that 
they were serving God by impressing their individual 
character and system of salvation upon their deluded 
and unthinking followers, but, in reality, they were 
ministers of Satan, as their abuse of God's Church 
and their scandalous treatment and perversion of His 
Revelation to mankind abundantly show. The prin- 
ciples they fathered sapped the very foundations of 
the true worship of God and destroyed all moral sense 
in man. The evil effects of their destructive propa- 
ganda were noticeable everywhere in their own day 
and passed down to successive ages bringing in 
their train an immorality, a lewdness and a licen- 
tiousness that have hardly been equalled in the worst 
days of paganism. The teaching of these lawless ones 
is rampant even to-day. It is substantially that which 
is now put forth by our modern materialists, who 
brazenly contend that the human will is devoid of 
self-direction and self-determining power, as is a 
feather subject to the action of different currents of 
air. Thus the evil done by the so-called Reformers 
in their day and generation lives after them to discredit 
their mission and their authority and to warn all to 
beware of their false teaching and their pernicious 
example. 

It is pitiful to know that in this enlightened age 
there are numbers in our midst who still claim Luther 
as the friend of liberty and a defender of the rights 
of reason. These men are unwilling to read his 
works, which, as every scholar recognizes, present a 
dismal and low estimate of human nature and do 
not, therefore, entitle him to be considered in any 
legitimate sense as an apostle of humanity, of human 
liberty, of human dignity or inherent worth. Re- 
ligious bigotry, which controls and dominates all 
their natural impulses of decency and honor, pre- 
vents them from seeing the insult Luther's teaching 
presents to human freedom and its disastrous effects 
upon true religion and real Christian morality. In 
the words of the Holy Spirit of Truth we cry out: 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 281 

"O ye sons of men how long will ye be dull of heart? 
Why do you love vanity and seek after lying?" If 
you love truth and sincerely desire enlightenment 
open up the pages of Luther's work on "Slave Will" 
and discover for yourselves at first hand that he spoke 
very little of liberty, and that he had no conception 
of it other than as what we call "license," the license to 
resist and to rebel against all legitimate authority, 
Ecclesiastical and Civil. In that work you will find 
that he maintained with all his force that man is a 
hopelessly corrupt being, as devoid of all spiritual 
freedom as a mere animal, utterly incapable of 
doing good, the sport of either a devil that mocks 
him or of a God that damns without mercy. Is not 
such a teaching calculated to make the blood run 
cold in the veins of men attuned to theMruth as 
it is in Christ and His Church? Examine the book 
carefully and see for yourselves how the principle 
he lays down as gospel truth not only attacks, but 
destroys a possession and an attribute of man which 
has ever been held sacred and which is dear to the 
human heart, namely, human liberty. When you 
become acquainted with his horrible teaching, you 
will not wonder that to him the word "liberty," which 
excites a thrill and stirs the deepest feelings of the 
soul, had little or no significance. 

The truth is that Luther rarely spoke or wrote of lib- 
erty in the sense in which we know and realize the , 
God-given boon. It is a well-known fact of history 
that he did not favor that freedom of thought which 
later became the vogue among his progeny. Liberty, 
as he understood the word, was solely for himself, 
but not for others. With him it was a personal matter. 
All men were free to differ with the Pope, to reject 
his teaching, to curse him to the lowest depths, were 
even invited and encouraged to slay him like a wolf 
or robber, and wash their hands in his blood and 
that of his cardinals and other adherents, but they 
must not dare to differ from Martin Luther. Sir 
William Hamilton, a non-Catholic writer, says : "The 1 



282 The Facts About Luther 



great reformer had an assurance of his personal 
inspiration of which he was, indeed, no less confident 
than of his ability to perf orm miracles. He disclaimed 
the Pope, he spurned the Church, but varying in all 
else, he never doubted of his own infallibility." His 
autocracy, as is well known, allowed no discussion 
and his intolerance knew no limits. The tyranny that 
dominated his propaganda was the natural result of 
his false and un-heard of theories. Theory, as every 
one knows, is the cause of practice and, therefore, 
it is evident that from a corrupt theory, corrupt con- 
duct will flow. Luther advanced the false theory that 
man did not possess free-will, and by consequence 
was deprived of personal liberty, and thus holding 
tenaciously to his false theory he could not save him- 
self from its corruption, and, naturally, he became not 
the advocate, but the enemy of all liberty, civil and 
religious. 

Non-Catholics, as a rule, are not familiar with the 
degrading teachings which Luther expounded in his 
infamous work on "Slave Will!' They have never 
been given an opportunity to study this volume at 
first hand and find out for themselves the destructive 
principles therein advocated. Their ignorance of the 
facts has been taken advantage of and they have 
been made to believe that their leader, who declared 
man's will to be a "slave will," was the real and 
only one who promoted liberty in the sixteenth cen- 
tury by breaking the fetters of religious bondage and 
securing for all perfect freedom of conscience and 
thought. This view has been repeated so often by 
the maligners of truth that they have come to imagine 
that as soon as the people of Europe got the Bible, 
Luther's Bible, mistranslated, changed, and altered, 
they abandoned the Mother Church, rushed into the 
new man-made form of religion of their own accord 
and at once established civil and religious liberty for 
everybody. The story is fascinating. It tells against 
Rome and, therefore, thousands upon thousands have 



Free-Will and Liberty of Conscience 283 



been deceived into giving it credence. What, how- 
ever, is the hard, cold, plain truth in the case? 

History, when truly and fully written, proves that 
all the notions entertained by our separated brethren 
on this matter are but the lying artifices of the mis- 
chievous, intended to deceive, and that whenever and 
wherever Luther's abominable principles and his 
Protestantism triumphed, they succeeded by violence, 
torture, persecution and the power of wicked princes 
against the struggles, the protestations and the mani- 
fest will of the people. Everywhere that they attained 
control of the government, which they invariably 
sought, they overthrew religious liberty and imperiously 
imposed their new-fangled beliefs on the country and 
on the people thereof. This may seem a very strong 
statement, but the facts of history confirm it most 
abundantly. In advancing this statement, we do not 
seek to appeal to prejudice or stir up hatred. We aim 
to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the 
truth, to enlighten those who love justice and to defend 
our forefathers in the faith who were always and in all 
places the real upholders of the liberties of the people 
and without whose struggles and sacrifices we would 
not now be in the enjoyment of these inestimable 
blessings. 

According to the time-honored teaching of the Cath- 
olic Church, religious liberty guarantees to every man 
the right to worship God according to the dictates 
of his conscience without thereby incurring any civil 
penalties or disabilities whatever. The Catholic 
Church has not only proclaimed this doctrine from 
the very beginning of her existence but she has, 
moreover, faithfully adhered to it in practice all 
through the course of her marvelous existence. No 
one who is familiar with her career can gainsay 
this statement. "It is an axiom/' wrote the late Arch- 
bishop Kenrick of Baltimore, "that the worship of * 
God must be voluntary in order to be acceptable. 
Liberty of conscience was claimed by Tertullian for 
the Christians, as a right grounded on the very nature 



284 



The Facts About Luther 



of religion. 'It is/ said he, 'a right and a natural 
privilege, that each one should worship as he thinks 
proper; nor can the religion of another injure or 
profit him/ Neither is it a part of religion to compel 
its adoption, since this should be spontaneous, not 
forced, as even sacrifices are asked only of the cheer- 
ful giver. The duty of worshiping God conformably 
to His revealed will being manifest, every interfer- 
ence with its discharge is a violation of the natural 
rights which man possesses to fulfill . so solemn an 
obligation. The use of force to compel compliance 
with this duty, is likely to result in mere external 
conformity, which, without the homage of the heart, 
is of no value whatever." This is the uniform teaching 
of the Catholic Church. "If at any time," as Cardinal 
Gibbons states, "encroachments on these sacred rights 
of man were perpetrated by professing members of 
the Catholic faith, these wrongs, far from being sanc- 
tioned by the Church, were committed in palpable 
violation of her authority." 

Luther was by no means ignorant of this teaching 
and practice of the ancient Church, which he singled 
out for abuse and misrepresentation. During his 
preparation for the priesthood and after his ordina- 
tion, he familiarized himself with all that was to* be 
known on the important topic. He knew as well as 
any priest or layman of his day that, whilst Christ, 
His Apostles and their legitimate successors in the 
Divine mission of teaching and preaching the truths 
of revelation, enjoined obedience on all, under the 
penalty of being ranked with heathens and publicans, 
they, however, did not intend and never meant to 
stifle or to crush all rational liberty and all rational 
investigation. He knew that their insistence on the 
acceptance of the eternal verities had for purpose the 
cultivation of the truest and highest independence of 
conscience and of thought by perfect submission to 
God's teaching, thus saving men from being "tossed 
about by every w r ind of doctrine," and that personal 
freedom of thought and fallible judgment in religious 




Free-Will and Liberty of Conscience 285 

matters leads inevitably to the destruction of "the 
faith once delivered to the saints/' The "Truth," as 
: St. John says, "shall set you free." Luther knew 
and, in his earlier days, taught and insisted that in 
obeying the Church and her authorized ambassadors, 
men obeyed Him who founded and commanded her 
to teach all things whatsoever He had directed. He 
knew, too, that whilst in the clear, plain, explicit 
teaching of revelation obedience was strictly enjoined 
to preserve truth in all its original purity, in other 
matters that were not essential, a reasonable latitude 
was always wisely allowed. He knew all this, but 
gradually becoming restless under the restraint of 
Divine limitations, which he construed as servility of 
intellect, and nursing the unwholesome thought that 
men were absolutely free to decide by their private 
judgment whether they would receive or reject the 
eternal verities, he, conveniently, in his state of antago- 
nism to Divine authority, forget his earlier beliefs, 
and grew pugnacious, rebellious and seditious. No 
longer willing to recognize and submit to the conserv- 
ative principle of Church authority, which up to his 
day held the religious world in the unity for which 
Christ prayed and willed, this proud man forthwith 
determined to oppose, persecute and malign the insti- 
tution which Christ enjoined all to obey and respect 
and to which during fifteen hundred years millions 
upon millions of the brightest, ablest and the most in- 
telligent minds had given glad and willing loyalty and 
submission. 

As had been the case with all other heresiarchs who 
preceded him, Luther used the weapons of which 
hell availed itself to inaugurate "sects" and "dissen- 
sions," in order to burst asunder the time honored 
bond of Christian unity. An adept in lying, which 
every studfent knows he approved by his teaching and 
example, he went forth in bold effrontery to make 
his hearers believe that the Church had bound its 
members hand and foot, body and soul, and that they 
were not allowed even to reflect or think for them- 



286 The Facts About Luther 



selves. The time had come, he thought, to strike 
and free mankind from what he called the degrading 
yoke of the Papacy and to restore to them their 
"Christian liberty." He told them that those who 
professed the old religion were groaning under a worse 
than Babylonian captivity and that all who would rally 
under his banner of reform would be brought back 
from exile into the beautiful land of Israel, there to 
worship in freedom and in peace near the Sion of God. 
In the desire to accomplish his wicked project he 
never thought how like he was to Antichrist, the 
one who sets up a fake Christ or a false Christianity 
or draws away many from the true. No. He thought 
that the Pope, whom Jesus Christ made the head of His 
society, was Antichrist ; that the Church was ruthlessly 
trampled under foot by his followers and especially by 
his ministers ; that the liberties of the world were en- 
tirely crushed in Catholicism. The Church, her ruler, 
her teachings, were all, according to him, corrupted; 
and this instigator of revolt, who himself spurned 
authority and declared the Decalogue had little or no 
binding force on Christians, exhorted all to arise in 
their strength to break their chains and to sever their 
connection with Rome forever. The saving and re- 
straining influence of Church authority was to be 
spurned as wholly incompatible with freedom and each - 
one henceforth was encouraged to invest himself with 
sovereign power and unrestricted liberty in dealing 
with all matters of religion. Thus, under the enticing 
name of freedom, men were promised that they would 
realize the brightest visions of liberty and the blessing 
of true and independent manhood. 

But the credentials for all this ? Did the new doc- 
trine of private judgment, which was to bring about 
"the emancipation of the human mind," result in the 
blessings it announced with such a flourish of trum- 
pets? Did the insurrection against the power estab- 
lished by God in the spiritual order, wherein existed, 
in principle and practice, true independence of con- 
science and thought, compensate for the profound and 



Free-Will and Liberty of Conscience 287 

degrading subjection of the intellect and the adoption 
of the thoughts and words of the impudent and low 
buffoon, who dogmatized in taverns amid the fumes 
of beer and outraged in his fury that same liberty 
he pretended to secure for his companions in rebel- 
lion? Is it not true, as all ages attest, that whoever 
throws off the yoke of legitimate authority will be 
punished with slavery; and the more legitimate the 
authority, that is, marked with the Divine seal, the 
more complete and degrading the servitude? Men 
who refuse to obey God and those whom He author- 
izes to rule in His name, are invariably led, as the 
blind, by fools or bound by executioners. Mark how 
all this was literally realized in the case of the Re- 
former and his followers in rebellion against the Church 
of God. 

Luther stood before the world in the attitude of a 
liberator, but when we draw near, we discover his 
doctrine is license and his behavior its exemplifica- 
tion. We were prepared to think, when he freed 
himself and his blind followers from the duty of obedi- 
ence to Rome and presented his "new gospel," 
proclaiming the principle of private judgment as the 
broad basis of his system of Christian liberty, that 
it would at least have guaranteed its followers real 
freedom of thought and of judgment in all matters 
of belief. Surely we might expect that after having 
indignantly rejected the wise and wholesome principle 
of Church authority as incompatible with liberty, he 
would not attempt to enthrone again this self-same 
principle in his new system of belief, much less to 
impose it as an obligation on those whom he cajoled 
and seduced to leave the Church of their fathers to 
embrace one of his own making. 

Yet this course, absurd and inconsistent as it mani- 
festly proved, was the very one he adopted and the 
one adopted, as Spalding says, "without one excep- 
tion, by the numerous sects to which the Reformation 
gave birth. If there be any truth in history, the 
reformers were themselves the most intolerant of men, 



288 The Facts About Luther 



not only towards the Catholic Church, but towards 
each other. They could not brook dissent from the 
crude notions on religion which they had broached. 
Men might protest against the decisions of the Cath- 
olic Church; but woe to them, if, following out their 
own private judgment, they dared protest against the 
self-constituted authority of the new-fangled sects." 

The tyrannical and intolerant character of Luther, 
the father of the Reformation, is a fact admitted by 
all candid Protestant writers. Roscoe, for instance in 
his "Life and Pontificate of Leo X," justly censures 
"the severity with which Luther treated all those, 
who unfortunately happened to believe too much on 
the one hand, or too little on the other, and could 
not walk steadily on the hair-breadth line which he 
had presented." This distinguished writer, whose pen 
has so glowingly depicted the bright literary age of 
Leo X., makes the following appropriate remarks on 
this glaring inconsistency: "Whilst Luther was 
engaged in his opposition to the Church of Rome, he 
asserted the right of private judgment with the confi- 
dence and courage of a martyr. But no sooner had 
he freed his followers from the chains of Papal domi- 
nation, than he forged others in many respects equally 
intolerable; and it was the employment of his latter 
years to counteract the beneficial effects produced by 
his former years." 

For a time Luther was almost omnipotent and exer- 
cised his self-constituted power to persecute with 
relentless fury. No sooner, however, did his followers 
in revolt recover from the first enchantment of his 
personal influence and the intoxication of their insur- 
rection against the Holy See, than they began to 
quarrel with their leader and with each other, just, 
we suppose, to give an object lesson in dissension and 
illustrate practically their widely heralded and incon- 
sistent system of liberty. Their controversies, bick- 
erings and wranglings, all the result of their glorious 
new gospel of so-called Christian liberty, are matters 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 289 

of historical record and put down to the shame of 
Protestantism. 

Luther set himself up against all law, restraint, 
and ordinance, and his disciples soon followed his 
example. As he attacked the most essential truths 
of Christianity, we must not wonder that his followers, 
trained in the principles of private interpretation, used 
their right to construe the verities of religion as their 
individual judgment dictated. The path to unity, which 
freedom of thought and of judgment in matters of 
religion was supposed to establish, was soon trodden 
down and rendered desolate by the divergent views 
of its misguided followers. In the work of construc- 
tion its builders maliciously destroyed and recklessly 
frittered away the eternal verities, so much so, that 
scarcely one saving truth of revelation remained as 
a basis of their belief. One and all rejected the 
Church, "the pillar and the ground of the truth" ; one 
and all spurned the authority of the Church's legiti- 
mate head; one made God the author of sin; another 
made the Almighty unalterably determine the ultimate 
fate of each man beforehand from all eternity ; "one," 
to use the words of Luther in his letter to the Chris- 
tians of Antwerp, "rejected baptism; another the 
Eucharist; another strikes out revelation from his 
creed ; one says this, the other that ; there are as many 
sects as heads; everybody wishes to be a prophet." 
When the Founder of Protestantism saw his path 
of unity winding in so many directions and his self- 
assumed infallibility ignored, he grew disconsolate, 
threatening and abusive. On page 292 of the 
"Tischreden," we find what this man, who was sup- 
posed to have freed his followers from the chains of 
papal domination, thought of his false brothers and 
fellow heretics who would no longer suffer his domi- 
nation and intolerance. "If," he says, " they would 
not listen to him, so much the worse for them; in 
the end, they would be seen with the worthies, whom 
they resembled, all burning; in Hell together." Surely 



290 The Facts About Luther 



no Pope of Rome was ever so uncharitable as to voice 
such wholesale condemnation. 

But the tyranny and intolerance of Luther did not 
stop in mere denunciation of those who dared to exer- 
cise the liberty of differing from him in his opinions. 
All who ventured to question his infallibility in 
religious matters were made to feel the heavy weight 
of his habitual and never-ceasing intolerant vengeance. 
From the number of the many victims of his brutal 
conduct, we will recall a few glaring examples. One 
of the victims of Luther's violence was his most 
favored disciple Melanchthon, a learned but weak, 
timid, obsequious character. "This man was incapable 
of bearing any contradiction/' says his friend Baum- 
gartner. "He veered with every wind and whilst 
timidly a disciple of the Reformer, he was secretly 
a Calvinist." In a letter Melanchthon wrote to his 
friend Camerarius, he tells of Luther's brutal conduct 
towards him. "I am," he says, "in a state of servi- 
tude, as if I was in the cave of Cyclops and often 
do I think of making my escape." Deploring Luther's 
outbursts of temper he says, "I tremble when I think 
of the passions of my master; they yield not in vio- 
lence to the passions of Hercules." He testifies, more- 
over, that Luther occasionally inflicted on him personal 
chastisement. According to Goschler, this disciple 
"gave himself up to all manner of oaths and contu- 
melious speeches which dismayed every one." He 
lacked, however, the courage to break the chains of 
servitude with which his cruel master had bound him 
hand and foot. Happy, indeed, he would have been 
had he followed the example of Staupitz, Ulenberg 
and others among Luther's quondam friends, who 
were wise in time and returned to Catholic unity, the 
"City that could not be hid" containing "the light 
of the world" to which the heresiarch had shut his 
eyes. 

Andrew Bodenstein, more generally known by the 
name of Carlstadt, was another victim of Luther's 
intolerance. According to Audin, this man's voca- 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 291 

tion was to "blacken paper ; to throw ink on the head 
of Luther or his disciples, his delight and amusement." 
In his study of the Bible, using his right of private 
judgment, he reached totally different conclusions 
from Luther as to the lawfulness of images, the real 
presence, infant baptism and other questions. Having 
the courage of his convictions, he began to disseminate 
his special discoveries and tried to win proselytes to 
his views and opinions. This proceeding angered 
Luther, who could brook no opposition. "You are my 
enemy, my adversary," said Luther to Carlstadt. "It 
is true," retorted the other : "I am the adversary and 
enemy of every one who will oppose God and fight 
against Christ and the truth." "May I see you broken 
on a wheel," said Luther on taking leave of him. 
"And may you," retorted the latter, "break your neck 
before you get out of the city." Luther never forgot 
this unpleasant altercation with his old professor. In 
the bitterness of his heart he there and then swore 
vengeance against his antagonist and ever after left 
nothing undone to have him banished from Witten- 
berg, the citadel of the Reformation. His spite 
followed his former disciple in his wanderings from 
place to place. Reduced to the direst misery through 
the never ceasing pursuit of Luther, Carlstadt wrote to 
his f riends Krautwald and Schwenkfeld, two Lutheran 
theologians, to tell of his distress and said : "I shall 
soon be forced to sell all, in order to support myself, 
my clothes, my delf, all my furniture. No one takes 
pity on me; and I fear that both I and my child shall 
perish with hunger." Luther hunted "his enemy and 
adversary," as he called Carlstadt, up and down the 
country in the most relentless manner until finally the 
victim of his abiding vengeance expired, a miserable 
outcast, at Basle in Switzerland. 

To these victims of Luther's intolerance we may add 
Strigel, who was imprisoned for three years for main- 
taining that "man was not a merely passive instrument 
in the work of his conversion" ; Hardenberg, who was 
banished from Saxony for having been guilty of some 



292 The Facts About Luther 



leaning towards the Calvinistic doctrines on the 
Eucharist, and Zwingle and the Sacramentarians, 
whom, Luther declared, "were heretics who had broken 
away from him," and "ministers of Satan, against 
whom no exercise of severity, however great, would be 
excessive." 

Luther not only persecuted individuals, but also 
large bodies of dissenters who organized themselves 
to resist his authority and disseminate doctrines 
opposed to his. Prominent amongst the rebels from 
the Lutheran ranks were the Anabaptists, who received 
their name from their custom of baptizing over again 
those who had been already baptized in infancy. John 
Miinzer, the leader of the sect, and his preachers gave 
themselves out for prophets in Thuringia and other 
places, and ran like madmen through the streets of 
the cities and towns exhorting and summoning all to 
be re-baptized. In their reckless propaganda they 
sacked churches, destroyed altars and trod under foot 
the images of Christ and His saints. Not only men, 
but even women ran wildly from place to place and 
flung themselves on the ground cursing and praying 
by turns. The rabble were invited to join "the 
thousand years' reign of Christ" they imagined had 
come when "God would destroy all tyrants from off 
the face of the earth." They promised possession of 
every enjoyment to all who would join their ranks 
and help in downing ail constituted authority. A 
frightful condition of things ensued. Polygamy even 
was introduced and the most scandalous excesses were 
openly commited without fear or shame. None of their 
prophets, Miinzer, Mattiezen, a baker of Haarlem, 
Bockhold, a tailor from Leyden, whilst they agreed 
in putting forward a free inquiry into the meaning 
of the Bible as the fundamental principle of their 
teaching, would tolerate any other interpretation than 
his own. 

Luther could not endure this new sect, which his 
teaching on private judgment brought into being. 
He manifested his opposition toward it in a synod 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 293 

convened at Hamburg on the 7th of August, 1536, 
composed of deputies sent by all the cities which 
had separated from the Mother Church. The object 
of the synod was to devise means for exterminating 
the adherents of Miinzer and his new. religion. The 
animus of this synod is manifested in one of its decrees, 
which runs as follows: "Whoever rejects infant 
baptism, whoever trangresses the orders of the magis- 
trates, whoever preaches against taxes, whoever teaches 
the community of goods, whoever usurps the priest- 
hood, whoever holds unlawful assemblies, whoever 
sins against faith, shall be punished with death. . . . 
As for the simple people who have not preached or 
administered baptism, but who were seduced to permit 
themselves to frequent the assemblies of the heretics, 
if they do not wish to renounce Anabaptism, they 
shall be scourged, punished with perpetual exile and 
even with death, if they return three times to the 
place whence they have been expelled. " Not a single 
protest was raised against this cruel decree. It 
received the unanimous approbation of the assembled 
delegates. When the bigamist, Philip of Hesse, was 
apprised of the intolerant views of the synod, he 
remonstrated wtih Luther, but to no purpose. The 
excommunicated Saxon monk sent the Landgrave a 
letter to soothe his scruples of conscience on the 
severity of the official decree of the synod and therein 
openly defended persecution on Scriptural grounds. 
"Whoever," he wrote, "denies the doctrines of our 
faith, aye, even one article which rests on the Scrip- 
ture, or the authority of the universal teaching of the 
Church, must be punished severely. He must be 
treated not only as a heretic, but also as a blasphemer 
of the holy name of God. It is not necessary to lose 
time - in disputes with such people; they are to be 
condemned as impious blasphemers." No comments 
are here needed. Luther's doctrine, as given to this 
synod, it is obvious, is entirely opposed to freedom of 
conscience and in favor of religious persecution. 
Every student of history knows that Luther treated 



294 The Facts About Luther 



with an insufferable arrogance and downright intoler- 
ance all who refused to submit to his wild, erratic 
and destructive pronouncements. He was as intolerant 
towards the leaders and followers of the new sects 
that sprang up and differed from him, as he was 
against the Mother Church and her adherents. "As 
I am now," he says, "near the grave, I will bring 
this testimony and this glory with me before the 
judgment seat of my dear Lord and Saviour, Jesus 
Christ, that with all my heart I have condemned and 
avoided the enthusiasts and the enemies of the Sacra- 
ments, Carlstadt, Zwingle, Oecolampad, Stenckfeld, 
and their disciples in Zurich and wherever they may 
be." "I would," he goes on to say, "far sooner be 
cut into pieces or burnt a hundred times over, than 
be of one opinion or of one mind with Stenckfeld, 
Zwingle, Carlstadt, Oecolampad, and whoever else 
they may be, the wicked enthusiasts, or agree with 
their teaching." Of Zwingle and his colleague, 
Oecolampad, he wrote that "they had a devilish, super- 
devilish, blasphemous heart and lying lips." All this 
and more of the same kind of reproach showed the 
love the reformer entertained for those who deserted 
his cause and inaugurated sects of their own making. 
Zwingle replied to Luther and told him, "We do thee 
no injustice when we reproach and condemn thee as 
a worse betrayer and denier of Christ than the ancient 
heretic Marcion." Zurich also answered the leader 
of revolt by the mouth of Campanus: "It is as 
certain that Luther is a devil, as that God is God." 

But this glorious defender of religious liberty is 
not satisfied merely with persecuting those who refused 
to submit to his authority and infallibility. Just to 
show how dear to him was the principle of liberty 
of conscience, he inaugurated a campaign of intoler- 
ance against the Jews such as was never surpassed 
in severity or cruelty before or since. Not content 
with calling them by the most opprobrious names, "ass- 
heads," "lying mouths," "devils' children," "devils," 
"young devils, damned to hell," he consoles himself 



Free-Will and Liberty of Conscience 295 

with the thought that "they will be (tormented, not 
in upper hell nor in middle hell, but in hell's deepest 
depths." He tells how they ought to be treated by 
Christian princes: how he would treat them, if he 
had the power. "What," he writes, "are we to do 
with this rejected, damned people of the Jews?..., 
I will give my honest advice." 

"First, their synagogues or schools are to be set on 
fire and whatever will not burn, is to be covered and 
heaped over with earth, so that never again shall one- 
find stone or cinder of them left. 

"Secondly, their houses are likewise to be broken 
down and destroyed, for they do exactly the same in 
them as they also do in their schools. Therefore thejr 
may perhaps be allowed a roof or a stable over them,, 
as the Gypsies are, in order that they may know they 
are not the lords in our country as they boast to 
be.... 

"Thirdly, all their Prayer Books and Talmuds are 
to be taken away from them, in which such idolatry r , 
lies, curses and blasphemies are taught. 

"Fourthly, their Rabbis are to be forbidden under 
pain of capital punishment to teach any more. . . . 

"Fifthly, the Jews are to be entirely denied legal 
protection when using the roads in the country, for 
they have no business to be in the country. . . . 

"Sixthly, usury is to be forbidden them, and all their 
cash and their treasures of silver and gold are to be 
taken away from them and to be put aside to be: 
preserved. And for this reason, all that they have 
(as was said above), they have stolen and robbed 
from us through their usury." 

Further on in his work "About the Jews and their 
Lies" edition 1543, he addresses himself to the princes 
in these words: Burn their synagogues. Forbid them 
all that I have mentioned above. Force them to work- 
and treat them with every kind of severity, as Moses 
did in the desert and slew three thousand. . . .If that: 
is no use, we must drive them away like mad dogs, 
in order that we may not be partakers of their 



296 The Facts About Luther 



abominable blasphemy and of all their vices, and in 
order that we may not deserve the anger, of God and 
be damned with them. I have done my duty. Let 
every one see how he does his. I am excused." 

The implacable hatred of Luther towards the Jews 
stands out in bold and unfavorable contrast with the 
consistent, uniform, kind consideration of the Cath- 
olic Church and her rulers towards that oppressed 
people. It is well known how, in the Middle Ages, the 
Jews were constantly and uniformly protected by the 
Popes, even in Rome itself, where they had,^ and still 
have at the present time, a special quarter of the city 
allotted to them. Rome has always been the asylum 
and home of this oppressed people, as Voltaire him- 
self acknowledges, and Avignon, because it was for 
a long time the residence of the Popes, shares with 
the Eternal City this honorable distinction. 

The Jews themselves bear witness to this fact. In 
the "great Jewish Sanhedrin" held in Paris in the year 
1807, and in the session of the fifth of February of 
that year, the following resolutions were placed upon 
record of that Jewish assembly: "At divers times the 
Roman Popes have given protection and refuge in 
their territories to the persecuted Jews from all parts 
of Europe. Towards the end of the seventh century 
St. Gregory defended them in all Christian countries. 
In the tenth century the Spanish Bishops resisted the 
111 treatment of the Jews by the people, and Pope 
Alexander II. congratulated them on their courageous 
attitude. In the twelfth century St. Bernard defended 
them, and Innocent II. and Alexander III. protected 
them. In the thirteenth century Gregory IX. averted 
a threatening disaster against them in England, as 
well as in France and Spain, as this Pope commanded, 
under the penalty of excommunication, that no one 
do violence to their conscience or interfere with their 
holy days. Clement V. facilitated for them the means 
of education. Clement VI. gave them an asylum in 
Avignon, when they were persecuted in the whole of 
Europe. It would be easy to enumerate many other 



Free-Will and Liberty of Conscience 297 

kind promulgations in favor of the Jews. The people 
of Israel, ever unhappy and almost ever persecuted, 
never had the opportunity nor the means to acknowl- 
edge their gratefulness for the many benefits received. 
Since 1800 years, this is the first opportunity afforded 
to express the feelings of our heart. . . .The deputies 
of the French Empire and of the Kingdom of Italy 
in the Hebrew Synod, full of gratitude for the many 
kindnesses and protection granted the Jews by the 
Catholic clergy, do resolve that the expression of our 
feelings be incorporated in the records of this day, 
that it forever remain in authentic testimony of the 
gratitude of the Jewish people." Lettre aux Isrelites 
sur l'attitude qui leur convient de prendre a 1'egard de 
la souverainete temporelle du Pape.) 

Another testimony to the attitude of the Church 
and her head towards the oppressed Israelites was 
furnished in the reply of Benedict XV. to the Ameri- 
can Jewish Committee, which in a letter to the Pope 
under date of December 30, 191 5, cited instances in 
Poland by which Jews "have been marked for special 
persecution and have been subjected to oppressive 
measures not borne by compatriots of other creeds." 
Among other things the petitioners wrote : "With all 
due veneration we now approach the Supreme Pontiff 
for succor in this the bitter hour of our need, knowing 
the exemplary humanity for which your Holiness is 
justly distinguished. . . .We recall with admiration and 
gratitude that on many occasions in the past some of 
the revered predecessors of your Holiness have, under 
like conditions, extended protection to those of the 
Jewish faith in the interest of right and justice. 
Appreciating the transcendent importance which the 
entire civilized world attaches to any utterance from 
so exalted a source of morality and wisdom as that 
w;hich your Holiness represents, we confidently express 
the hope that timely action be taken by the Vatican 
to the end that the suffering under which millions of 
our brethren in faith are weighed down may be termi- 
nated by an act of that humanity to which your Holi- 



298 The Facts About Luther 



ness is so passionately devoted, and that the cruel 
intolerance and the unjust prejudice which have been 
aroused against them may forever vanish before this 
glorious exercise of your supreme moral and spiritual 
power." 

To this communication, signed by the most promi- 
nent representatives of the Jewish people of America, 
the Pope's Cardinal Secretary of State replied in a 
letter "breathing the Christ-like spirit of peace and 
love, reminding all of the principles of natural right 
to respect all men as brethren, which should be 
observed and respected in relation to the children of 
Israel, as it should be to all men, for it would not 
conform to justice and religion itself, to derogate 
therefrom, solely because of a difference of religious 
faith." 

Herman Bernstein, commenting on this letter in 
The American Hebrew, says: "Among all the Papal 
letters ever issued with regard to the Jews through- 
out the history of the Vatican, there is no statement 
that equals this direct, unmistakable plea for equality 
for the Jews and against prejudice on religious 
grounds. The Bull issued by Innocent IV., declaring 
the Jews innocent of the charge of using Christian 
blood for ritual purposes, while a remarkable docu- 
ment, was, after all, merely a statement of fact, 
whereas, the present statement by Pope Benedict XV. 
is a plea against religious prejudice and persecution." 

All this shows Rome's attitude towards the 
oppressed. How different it is from that of Luther 
as evidenced by his own utterances in his infamous 
work "About the Jews and their Lies/' which brand 
him beyond power of contradiction as an oppressor, 
a tyrannical anti-Semite. 

A volume might be filled with indubitable facts to 
prove the intolerant spirit of Luther and of the various 
sects which his rebellion originated. The quarrels, hos- 
tilities and jealousies that constantly arose among one 
and all, made them a prey to the fiercest dissensions. 
They anathematized and persecuted each other with the 



Free-Will and Liberty of Conscience 299 

most virulent hatred and indulged in the coarsest and 
^vilest invective. The ultra-Lutherans and the Melanch- 
thonians mutually denounced each other and even re- 
fused to unite in the rites of communion and burial. The 
Flaccianists and the Strigelians, the Osiandrians and 
the Stancarians and many other new sects persecuted 
one another with relentless fury. The Lutherans, 
according to Professor Fecht, denounced and excluded 
the reformed Calvinists from salvation. The Calvinists 
roused up the people against the Lutherans, who in 
turn mildly and charitably designated their enemies as 
"the sons of the devil. " Zwingle complained of 
Luther's intolerance when he was the victim of its 
violence, but when he became almost omnipotent in 
Switzerland, he and his followers threw the poor Ana- 
baptists into the Rhine, inclosed in sacks, and mocked 
them at the same time with the inhuman taunt that 
"they were merely baptizing them by their own favorite 
method of immersion." 

The other reformers were not a whit better than 
Luther in regard to toleration. The injury done their 
cause by their bickerings, disunions and hostilities did 
not escape their own notice. Cahain, for instance, fully 
aware of the disastrous results accruing from the 
specious principles of universal liberty by which the 
reformers had allured multitudes to their standard, 
wrote to Melanchthon: "It is indeed important that 
posterity should not know of our differences; for it 
is indescribably ridiculous that we, who are in oppo- 
sition to the whole world, should be, at the very begin- 
ning of the Reformation, at issue among ourselves/' 
Melanchthon wrote in answer that "the Elbe with all 
its waters could not furnish tears enough to weep over 
the miseries of the distracted Reformation." 

The whole fabric of the Reformation threatened 
to fall to pieces at its very rise through the internal 
divisions and differences which Calvin in his letter to 
Melanchthon was so anxious "posterity should not 
know." One thing alone was able to save it from 
destruction, namely, the civil power whose influence 



300 The Facts About Luther 



and assistance the leaders in religious rebellion very 
soon learned to seek and obtain. The lawless anarchy 
into which Protestantism in its various forms had 
sunk made it necessary, if it would survive, to place 
the new religions under the protection of the degen- 
erate princes of the times, who, as Melanchthon admits, 
"had in view neither the purification of Christianity, 
the diffusion of learning, the exalting of a creed, nor 
the improvement of morals; but only interests that 
were miserable, profane, and earthly, adjudicating to 
themselves the treasures of the cloisters and religiously 
keeping the jewels of the churches. " The influence 
of the leaders of reform being on the w r ane owing to 
their dissensions, quarrels and intolerance, they saw 
clearly that their only hope of promoting further their 
power and ascendency was to invoke the interposition 
and backing of the temporal power without which 
their movement would be as inevitably suppressed as 
had been the commotions of the Hussities at a previous 
period. 

Luther, who was by no_ means, as Frederic von 
Schlegel says, "an advocate for democracy/' began to 
"assert the absolute power of rulers" and "zealously 
upheld," as Menzel, the Protestant historian says, 
"their princely power, the divine right of which, he 
even made an article of faith." "Thus," he continues, 
"through Luther's well-meant policy, the Reforma- 
tion naturally became that of the princes, and, con- 
sequently, instead of being the aim, was converted 
into a means of their policy." Not satisfied with 
catering to the vanity of the princes, Luther, who in 
his heart despised dominion and blasphemed majesty, 
appealed to their cupidity by promising them the 
spoils of sacrilege. "Your power," he said to the 
German princes, "emanates from God alone ; you have 
no master on this earth; you owe nothing to the 
Pope. Mind your own affairs and let him mind his. 
He is the Antichrist predicted by the prophet Daniel ; 
he is the man of sin. . . .You, princes and nobles, 
owe him neither first fruits nor services for the abbeys 

i 

:■■ 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 301 

he has bestowed upon you. The abbeys are as much 
your property as the game that runs on your lands. 
The monasteries in which these pious hypocrites live 
are dens of iniquity, which you must root out, if 
you would have God bless you in this life or in the 
next." (Audin, Vol. II, 186, 188.) 

At the beginning of Luther's rebellion, he denied 
the principle of authority, then encouraged indi- 
vidualism, and, finally, promoted resistance to estab- 
lished order and rule. When this centrifugal principle, 
which is the very basis of the Reformation, brought on 
insurbordination, uprising and popular revolts, he 
and other leaders went to the other extreme and 
justified absolutism and the use of despotic means in 
the government of the people. So Protestantism 
tended inevitably to destroy popular rights and 
liberty, and, at the same time, it strengthened the 
arbitrary rule of princes, who lording it with 
rods of iron over both the bodies and souls of their 
subjects, crushed out eventually all freedom, both civil 
and religious. 

Hallam, who lived and died a Prostestant, furnishes 
the following testimony in his great work, "The Intro- 
duction to the History of Literature," Vol. I, p. 200, 
Sec. 34. He says, "The adherents to the Church of 
Rome have never failed to cast two reproaches on 
those who left them ; one, that the Reform was brought 
about by intemperate and calumnious abuse, by out- 
rages of an excited populace or by the tyranny of 
princes; the other, that after stimulating the most 
ignorant to reject the authority of their Church, it 
instantly withdrew this liberty of judgment and 
devoted all, who presumed to swerve from the line 
drawn by law, to virulent obloquy, and sometimes to 
bonds and death. These reproaches, it may be a shame 
to us to own, can be uttered and cannot be refuted/' 

The favorite plan of establishing and reinforcing 
the Reformation when it began to wane and totter 
was by violence on the ruins of Catholic institutions. 
The Reformers supported the princes in trampling on 



302 The Facts About Luther 



the liberties of the people, and, in return, the princes 
supported the new beliefs. The result was that abso- 
lute monarchy prevailed wherever the Protestant 
party dominated. Jurieu, the celebrated Calvinist 
minister, quoted by Audin and Alzog, makes this 
acknowledgment : "Geneva, Switzerland, and the free 
cities, the electors, and the German princes, England, 
Scotland, Sweden and Denmark got rid of Popery 
and established the Reformation by the aid of the 
civil power." 

The vast majority of the people wanted to be and 
remain Catholics, but the State forced the new 
religions on them in these countries against their 
will, and progress was made only by the influence 
of civil power. The priests of the Catholic Church 
were killed off and hunted like criminals; the laity 
were converted by the rack, the thumbscrew, the dark 
cell, the peine forte et dure, fines, imprisonment, ban- 
ishment, stripes, the head-man's axe, the gallows and 
the disemboweling knife. Their property was con- 
fiscated and convents, abbeys, priories, monasteries, 
churches, passed into the hands of greedy potentates 
and their servile courtiers. Such were the methods and 
means invariably resorted to by the leaders of 
Protestantism to foist the new religion on the people. 
Was this toleration or oppression? 

Plain men may well look round them, and ask if 
these things can be. But all this is no hideous mis- 
quotation or misrepresentation. The facts are only 
too evident. Non-Catholic writers, as a rule, describe 
Luther and his work in the most glowing and favor- 
able terms. Many others, however, better informed 
and more enlightened, have, in all fairness and candor, 
humbly apprehended that the free exercise of private 
judgment was most heartily abhorred by the first 
Reformers, except only where the persons who 
assumed it happened to be exactly of their way of 
thinking. 

The late Protestant bishop Warburton was not 
afraid to give the following character of the pretended 



Free-Will and Liberty of Conscience 303 

advocates of civil and religious freedom; "The 
Reformers, Luther, Calvin, and their followers, under- 
stood so little in what true Christianity consisted that 
they carried with them into the reformed churches, 
that very spirit of persecution which had driven them 
from the Church of 'Rome." The Protestant historian 
Hallam also tells the truth when he says in his "Con- 
stitution History," page 63 : "Persecution is the deadly 
original sin of the Reformed churches, that which 
cools every honest man's zeal for their cause, in pro- 
portion as his reading becomes extensive." 

Gibbon, in his "Rise and Fall of the Roman 
Empire," Ch. LIV, says : "The patriot reformers were 
ambitious of succeeding the tyrants whom they 
dethroned. They imposed, with equal vigor, their 
creeds and confessions. They asserted the right of 
the magistrate to punish the heretic with death." 

Strickland in her "Queens of England," says: "It 
is a lamentable trait in human nature that there was 
not a sect established at the Reformation that did not 
avow, as part of their religious duty, the horrible 
necessity of destroying some of their fellow-creatures 
on account of what they severally termed heretical 
tenets." 

Guizot, in his "History of Civilization," pp. 261- 
262, says : "The Reformation of the sixteenth century 
was not aware of the true principles of intellectual 
liberty. . . .On the one side it did not know or respect 
all the rights of human thought; at the very moment 
it was demanding these rights for itself it was violating 
them towards others. On the other hand, it was 
unable to estimate the rights of authority in the matters 
of reason." 

Macaulay, in his "Essays" : Hampden, says : "Rome 
had at least prescription on its side. But Protestant 
intolerance, despotism in an upstart sect, infallibility 
claimed by guides who acknowledge that they had 
passed the greater part of their lives in error, restraints 
imposed on the liberty of private judgment at the 
pleasure of rulers who could vindicate their own pro- 



304 The Facts About Luther 



ceedings only by asserting the liberty of private judg- 
ment — these things could not long be borne. Those 
who had pulled down the crucifix could not long 
continue to persecute for the surplice. It required 
no great sagacity to perceive the inconsistency and 
dishonesty of men who, dissenting from almost all 
Christendom, would suffer none to dissent from them- 
selves; who demanded freedom of conscience, yet 
refused to grant it; who execrated persecution, yet 
persecuted; who urged reason against the authority 
of one opponent, and authority against the reason of 
another/' 

Lecky, in his "Rationalism in Europe," Vol. I, p. 
51, ed. 1870, says: "What shall we say of a church 
that was but a thing of yesterday; a church that had 
as yet no services to show, no claims upon the grati- 
tude of mankind; a church that was by profession 
the creature of private judgment, and was in reality 
generated by the intrigues of a corrupt court, which 
nevertheless suppressed by force a worship that multi- 
tudes deemed necessary to salvation; which by all 
her organs and with all her energies persecuted those 
who clung to the religion of their fathers? What 
shall we say of a religion which comprised at most, 
but a fourth part of the Christian world, and which 
the first explosion of private judgment had shivered 
into countless sects, which was nevertheless so per- 
vaded by the spirit of dogmatism that each of these 
sects asserted its distinctive doctrines with the same 
confidence, and persecuted with the same unhesitating 
violence, as a church which was venerable with the 
homage of twelve centuries?. . . .So strong and so 
general was its intolerance that for some time it may, 
I believe, be truly said that there were more instances 
of partial toleration being advocated by Roman Cath- 
olics than by orthodox Protestants." 

The foregoing quotations from reliable Protestant 
authors show how the Reformers believed in the rights 
of conscience and how they practised religious liberty. 
It is, moreover, a remarkable fact, that their followers 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 305 

have been guilty of persecution wherever they have had 
the power, not only against the Catholic Church, but 
against one another; and their intolerance, though 
greatly mitigated, is even at the present enlightened 
day far from being extinct. 

But have not Catholics, who boast that persecution 
is not, and never has been a doctrine of their Church, 
persecuted in times past ? We do not deny it ; but 
we answer that they did so as individuals and in direct 
opposition to the teaching of their Church. "Yet 
every impartial person/' as Abp. Spalding says, "must 
allow that the circumstances under which they perse- 
cuted were not so aggravated, nor so wholly without 
excuse, as those under which they were themselves 
persecuted by Protestants. The former stood on the 
defensive, while the latter were in almost every 
instance the first aggressors. The Catholics did but 
repel violence by violence, when their property, their 
altars and all they held sacred, were rudely invaded 
by the new religionists, under pretext of reform. Their 
acts of severity were often deemed necessary meas- 
ures of precaution against the deeds of lawless vio- 
lence, which everywhere marked the progress of 
reform. They did but seek the privilege of retain- 
ing quietly the religion of their fathers, which 
the reformers would fain have wrested from them 
by violence. They were the older and they were in 
possession. Could it be expected that they would 
yield without a struggle all that they held most dear 
and most sacred? There were extenuating circum- 
stances, which, though they might not wholly justify 
their intolerance, yet greatly mitigated its malice; 
while the reformers could certainly allege no such 
pretext in self-vindication/' 

The Catholic Church has always favored religious 
liberty and is to-day its most ardent defender and 
supporter. Facts are more convincing than argu- 
ments and Catholics are willing that, as to religious 
liberty, they be put to the test laid down by the 
Bible: "By their fruits ye shall know them." It is 



306 The Facts About Luther 



a fact that in this day and hour the Catholic coun- 
tries of Europe are far in advance of the Protestant 
countries in respect to religious independence. There is 
not one Catholic government on that continent which 
persecutes its subjects for conscience's sake and there is 
not one Protestant country in which Catholics enjoy 
equal rights and privileges with the members of the 
established religion. In England, Catholics are 
merely tolerated; in Switzerland, they suffer from 
religious disabilities; in Sweden, Holland, Denmark 
and Prussia, their conscientious convictions are dis- 
criminated against ; and as for Russia, their treatment 
is notoriously contrary to the demands of justice and 
of Christian charity. On the contrary in all Catholic 
countries, without any exception, where there is not 
and never was a governmentally established church, 
the great principle of universal toleration is sedulously 
•exercised, and all, Catholics and 1 Protestants alike, 
enjoy the blessings not only of religious but of civil 
rights and privileges. There is no room under Cath- 
olic teaching and principles for intolerance and perse- 
cution. 

The accusation that Catholic doctrine teaches that 
no faith is to be kept with heretics is totally unfounded. 
The religion of Catholics obliges them to respect the 
rights of others, and any apprehensions as to the dan- 
ger of their violating their sacred duty towards those of 
an opposite faith, are the result of vain fears, which 
no honest mind ought to harbor. All Catholics desire 
is to live together with their Protestant neighbors 
quietly and peaceably, each and all worshipping God 
as their conscience honestly directs. 

Catholics, it should be remembered, were the first in 
America to proclaim and to practise civil and religious 
liberty. While all the English colonies in the New 
World were practising persecution, while Protestants 
of one sect were everywhere intolerant of every other 
sect, the colony established by Lord Baltimore in 
Maryland granted civil and religious liberty to all who 
professed different beliefs. From this abode of happi- 



Free-Will and Liberty of Conscience 307 

ness and good will towards all, the principle of freedom 
spread until there was hardly a colony on this broad 
continent that did not make universal toleration a 
settled law of the land. The glory of being the first 
to raise the banner of civil and religious liberty ia 
this country belongs to Catholics and none can deny 
or rob them of it. This glory is all the greater, 
because at that very time the Puritans of New England 
and the Episcopalians of Virginia were busily engaged 
in persecuting their brother Protestant for conscience's 
sake ; and the former were moreover enacting proscrip- 
tive "blue laws" and "hanging witches." Ever since 
that far off day and before, when Columbus planted 
the Cross, the emblem of Christianity, upon American 
soil, Catholics have stood side by side with men of 
every creed in every human effort to make this the 
grandest and the freest nation in the world. Through- 
out all these years the country grew and developed 
because there has been good fellowship, mutual respect 
and hearty co-operation for the common good. 

But, alas, here in the morning of the twentieth 
century, here at a time when we have reached a perhaps 
unparalleled plane of general intelligence, at a time 
when we have lived together as neighbors and 
friends long enough to become well acquainted; 
when we have mingled together in social and 
business and fraternal life, here in such an era, 
we have thousands of misguided men foisting them- 
selves upon peaceful communities, scattering the seed 
of discord and religious hate and pouring forth their 
vile abuse of everything Catholic. They are not 
content to have civil and religious liberty for them- 
selves, but desire to deny it to Catholics, as is proved 
in many instances, especially by the fact that no Cath- 
olic can be elected President of the United States, 
no matter how competent he may be. To advance 
their wicked purposes, they go about with flag in 
hand, which they stain with their dirty fingers, to 
formr Know-Nothing societies like the Patriotic Order 
of Sons of America, the Junior Order of United 



308 The Facts About Luther 

American Mechanics, the Order of Independent 
Americans, the Luther League, the Guardians of 
Liberty, etc., etc., all pretending to be patriotic, but 
really persecuting and bigoted; all pretending to sup- 
port American institutions, but really trampling on 
the Constitution, which prohibits the establishment of 
any religion or the requirement of any religious test 
for public office; all pretending to favor religious 
liberty, but really plotting to violate it whenever Cath- 
olics are concerned. 

The flame of bigotry, which these malicious societies 
are now so vigorously fanning throughout the length 
and breadth of this great country, cannot last for 
long. Their creatures are being swatted on all sides. 
Ex-President Taft has dubbed them "Cockroaches" 
and President Wilson brands them as "Swashbucklers." 
Only ignorant fanatics are duped by the unclean birds 
of prey. Our Protestant f ellow-citizens are level- 
headed enough to see that Catholics are just as keen 
for their country's welfare and glory as they them- 
selves, just as ready to defend it, work for it and 
shed their blood for it as any in the land. They 
Tecognize that there is no just ground for any oppo- 
sition to Catholics, and as they are not fools they are 
not going to swallow the foul, calumnious, and filthy 
accusations against Catholics by which bigots, knaves 
and fanatics would destroy the mutual trust and 
understanding between citizens of a common- country 
and with a common cause. Their mentality is still 
sound and their hearts are in the right place. They 
believe that all citizens irrespective of nationality 
and creed must be friends, and to them no other 
relation is conceivable. They are aware of the specific 
objects of the evil doers, their insincerity and the 
utter lack of religion that exists among them and so 
they have come to consider the promoters of bigotry, 
the calamity howler, the alarmist and those editors 
who are bent on filling their pockets by publishing the 
lying and the riot-breeding literature that stirs up 
hatred and enmity between Protestantism and the 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 309 

Catholic Church, as a menace to civilization, to govern- 
ment, to the brotherly feeling that all of all faiths 
should strive to cultivate. 

The end of the hellish work of hatred is in sight, 
and all decent, fair-minded and intelligent Protestants 
are daily becoming more disgusted with the methods 
of vilification, mendacity and slanderous insinuation, 
which most of the breeders of hatred get from Luther, 
who was dismissed from the Catholic Church because 
Tie preached heresy and practised iniquity. The best 
amongst non-Catholics are determined to be no longer 
taken in by such frauds and gross swindlers and they 
feel the time has come for a closer union of Protes- 
tants and Catholics to combat the real evils of the 
day, the evils that are bringing disaster to our Amer- 
ican civilization. "The great enemy which the State, 
which Catholics and Protestants alike have to resist 
and vanquish by education," as Dr. Brownson remarks, 
"is the irreligion, pantheism, atheism, and immorality, 
disguised as secularism, or under the specious names 
of science, humanity, free-religion, and free-love, 
which not only strike at all Christian faith and Chris- 
tian morals, but at the family, the State, and civilized 
society itself." 

The learned publicist further remarks: "The State 
can not regard this enemy with indifference. . . .The 
American State is not infidel or godless, and is bound 
always to recognize and actively aid religion as far 
as in its power. Having no spiritual or theological 
competency, it has no right to undertake to say what 
shall or shall not be the religion of its citizens; it 
must accept, protect, and aid the religion its citizens 
see proper to adopt, and without partiality for the 
religion of the majority any more than the religion 
of the minority; for in regard to religion the rights 
and powers of minorities and majorities are equal. 
The State is under the Christian law, and it is bound 
to protect and enforce Christian morals and its laws, 
whether assailed by Mormonism, spiritism, f ree-lovism, 
pantheism, or atheism. 



310 The Facts About Luther 



'The modern world has strayed far from this doc- 
trine, which in the early history of this country nobody 
questioned. The departure may be falsely called 
progress and boasted of as a result of 'the march of 
intellect'; but it must be arrested, and men must be 
recalled to the truths they have left behind, if repub- 
lican government is to be maintained and Christian 
society preserved. Protestants who see and deplore 
the departure from the old landmarks will find them- 
selves unable to arrest the downward tendency without 
our aid, and little aid shall we be able to render them 
unless the Church be free to use the public schools 
— that is, her portion of them — to bring up her chil- 
dren in her own faith and train them to be good 
Catholics. There is a recrudescence of paganism, a 
growth of subtle and disguised infidelity, which it will 
require all that both they and we can do to arrest." 

It then behooves all who love liberty to stand 
together unto the destruction of the enemies of our 
glorious republic. i 

The descendants of Luther and the modern exem- 
plars of his spirit of hatred would do well to remember 
that the Catholic Church was born, brought up, and 
maintained through persecution. If, indeed, she had 
no longer adversaries, her members would need to 
despair of the promises of her Divine Founder. It 
would be impossible for her to pass through severer 
ordeals than she has in her past and especially at 
the time of the so-called Reformation. Experience 
has proved, over and over again, that the powers of 
hell, however determined in doing so, cannot extir- 
pate Catholicism by force from the midst of the 
peoples and the nations. The Church thrives under 
persecution, for to suffer for Christ's sake is a signal 
honor, and martyrdom is a crown of glory. The 
Christians, as Lactantius says, "conquer the world not 
by slaying but by being slain." Men are so constituted 
that they do not really love that which costs them no 
sacrifice. Just as the soldier, who has suffered for 
his country, holds it in deeper affection, so the child 



Free- Will and Liberty of Conscience 311 

of the Church loves her the more if he has had to 
suffer on her account. As long as struggle and oppo- 
sition continue the Church will live and flourish. There 
is so much vitality in her that all her haters can 
harm her little. Ever so many, Nero, Julian, Henry 
VIII., Luther, Calvin, Zwingle and their deluded imi- 
tators, have gone to their graves after living a life 
of fierce opposition to everything Catholic, and yet 
the Church lives on, proving over and over the state- 
ment of Gamaliel to the Jewish council; "If this be 
the work of men, it will come to naught. But if it be 
of God, you cannot overthrow it." The temporary 
harm, which those inflict who indulge in attacks 
against the Church, of whose history, teaching and 
precepts they are ignorant, is more than offset by the 
ultimate good. Divine vitality permeates the whole 
Church and no persecution, however frightful or 
excruciating, can prevail against her. The Master is 
with her. The enemy cannot conquer. She is Heaven- 
protected and will remain, in spite of all opposition, 
to the end of time to preach to mankind, as she ever 
did in the past, the inestimable blessings of civil and 
religious liberty. 



CHAPTER IX. 



Luther as a Religious Reformer. 

EVER since the day when the Saxon monk's hammer 
on the church door at Wittenberg sounded the 
signal for rebellion against spiritual and ecclesiastical 
authority, Luther's admirers have persistently and uni- 
formly held him, up before the world as a "great 
religious reformer." Their hero in a highly sensitized 
imagination fancied that he had a direct Divine mission 
to reform the Church of Christ, and, that, as he said, 
he "was by God's revelation called to be a sort of 
anti-pope." Men after his own heart, deluded, proud 
in intellect and revolutionary in tendency, gave willing 
credence to the self-asserted prerogative, and, believing 
without question his pretended claim to be true, they 
blindly chanted his praises and invited all to unite with 
them in paying him tribute. In all courtesy, but with 
entire frankness, we make bold to say that did these 
men make a profound and exhaustive study of Luther's 
writings and acts, they would soon cease their lauda- 
tions and discover for themselves how his life and 
teaching were distinctly and openly at variance with 
any conception of a "God-inspired man" and a true 
"spiritual leader." 

The title "religious reformer" is a proud and signifi- 
cant one. To wear it with honor, it is not enough merely 
to apply it to oneself ; nor is it becoming in others to 
confer it on any one unless the subject is distinguished 
for virtue and the purpose he has in view is the restora- 
tion of discipline relaxed, as well as the renewal of the 
standard of holy living to its pristine purity. From the 
beginning all who have arisen from the midst of their 
brethren charged with a distinct message from God to 
assail corruption and to raise men from earth to heaven, 
began their noble and sacred mission by first improving 
and reforming themselves. It is rightly expected that 
the moral leader of his generation should walk in that 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 313 

"holiness without which no man shall see the Lord." 
The true reformer, as Anderdon remarks, "should be 
as Elias, or the Baptist, in his moral height and per- 
sonal detachment; as Nathan, in his rebuke of 
licentious and murderous sin ; as Daniel in his fastings, 
in his self-affliction, in his tearful supplications for 
God's people. " He must, in a word, be able to say 
with St. Paul : "Be ye followers of me, as I also am of 
Christ." "Be ye followers of me, brethren, and observe 
them who walk so as you have our model." It is plain, 
then, that any one who sets himself up to be a moral 
leader should first begin by reforming himself, for' it 
is only then men become impressed, subdued and 
reclaimed. The irresistible persuasiveness of an 
upright and holy life, backed by the intrinsic truth 
of the real reformer's preaching, alone carries con- 
viction and brings about a loving compliance with 
Divine injunctions — the sure and sole foundation of all 
reformation worthy of the name. 

When we turn now to Luther and ask him why he 
claimed to be a religious reformer and why he posed 
as one entrusted by Heaven with a great and holy 
mission, we are not only astonished, but dumbfounded 
to discover that his title was self-assumed and without 
warrant, and, that, moreover, his qualifications for 
the work of reform were of such a nature as to impress 
the wise with the conviction that he received no call 
from Heaven to inaugurate and carry out a moral 
rejuvenation in either Church or State. Unlike the 
saintly preachers of God's truth of all times, he was 
in no way ever under a sense of his own personal need 
of improvement and was in consequence utterly incapa- 
ble and unfitted to elevate unto righteousness any 
among the brethren. As an inspired instrument of 
God to work out with success a genuine religious re- 
form, he stands out as the supreme contradiction in 
the history of all we know concerning Heaven's deal- 
ings with fallen nature in relation to its uplift and 
improvement. 

Every one who is in the least familiar with the 



314 



The Facts About Luther 



literature of the so-called Reformation and especially 
with that part of it which touches on the life of the 
pretended reformer, must appreciate his utter lack 
of constructive genius, his depraved manners and 
utterances and his perversity of principle coupled with 
falsity of teaching. He has nowhere and at no time 
given his hearers a complete, methodical and reasoned 
synthesis of God-given doctrine. He is inconsistent, 
illogical : he is not afraid to contradict to-day the state- 
ments of yesterday. It is, then, absurd beyond the 
power of expression to imagine that any one so noted 
as Luther for the ungovernable transports, riotous 
proceedings, angry conflicts and intemperate contro- 
versies that made up the greater part of his life, could 
be an instrument of God to bring about and to effect 
a moral and religious reform. To discover the notes 
of a messenger of God in one who had so little regard 
for merely ordinary proprieties and w T hose language 
was usually so coarse and disgusting that to quote it 
one would need to saturate the atmosphere with anti- 
septics and avoid coming into collision with the civil 
authorities, presupposes a partiality amounting to 
blindness. That he was a deformer and not a reformer 
is the honest verdict of all who are not blind partisans 
and who know the man at close vision for what he 
was and for what he stood sponsor. 

It has long since been said by Cicero that "most 
men are determined in their views by their mental 
and spiritual condition." This was undoubtedly the 
case with Luther and what that condition was on moral 
questions, on matrimony, on the dignity of man and 
on kindred matters, we learn from himself. His own 
utterances, his doubts, his terrors and those compunc- 
tious visitings of a disturbed conscience, which seem 
at one time at least to have made his life a torture, 
prove conclusively that he was not a God-inspired man 
and had no claim to be considered even an ordinary 
reformer or spiritual guide. 

In studying Luther, we must remember, that his 
cardinal dogma when he abandoned Catholic teaching, 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 315 

was that man has no free-will, that he can do no good 
and that to subdue animal passion is neither necessary 
nor possible. He insisted that the moral law of the 
Decalogue is not binding, that the Ten Commandments 
are abrogated and that they are no longer in force 
among Christians. "We must," he says, "remove the 
Decalogue out of sight and heart." (De Wette, 4, 188.) 
"If we allow them — the Commandments — any influence 
in our conscience, they become the cloak of all evil, 
heresies and blasphemies." (Comm. ad Galat. p. 310.) 
"If Moses should attempt to intimidate you with his 
stupid Ten Commandments, tell him right out: chase 
yourself to the Jews." (Wittenb. ad. 5, 1573.) Having 
thus unceremoniously brushed aside the binding force 
of the moral law, we do not wonder that he makes the 
following startling and shameless pronouncements. 
"As little as one is able," he says, "to remove moun- 
tains, to fly with the birds (Mist und Harn halten), 
to create new stars, or to bite off one's nose, so little 
can one escape unchastity." (Alts Abend Mahletre, 2, 
118.) Out of the depths of his depraved mind, he 
further declares: "They are fools who attempt to 
overcome temptations (temptations to lewdness) by 
fasting, prayer and chastisement. For such tempta- 
tions and immoral attacks are easily overcome when 
there are plenty of maidens and women." (Jen. ed. 
2, p. 216.) 

The filthiness embodied in this pronouncement is 
shocking. When we note the unbecoming language in 
which he couches his degrading teaching, how, we must 
ask ourselves, can its author be called "a messenger and 
a man of God?" Would his warmest advocates dare 
in this day and generation to repeat his words either 
in private or in public ? Would any Lutheran minister 
of the period be so lost to shame and common decency 
as to quote these in the presence of his family or sound 
them from his pulpit? Would any man using such 
language in our day be a welcome guest at the table 
of any of the ministers belonging to the seventeen 
different brands of Lutheranism? Could any man 



316 



The Facts About Luther 



uttering such filthy speech possibly enter into matri- 
mony imbued with those high ideals which are the glory 
of Christianity, so as to enable him to become a modeL 
husband or father, and to inspire his neighbors to 
practise domestic virtue? Why, then, call Luther a 
reformer, one who would not in our times be regarded, 
fit to be entrusted with police duty in the worst slums 
of our cities, much less to be made the presiding officer 
of a Vice Purity Committee? Like Bullinger, the 
Swiss reformer, we stand aghast at what he calls 
Luther's "muddy and swinish, vulgar and coarse 
teachings." The indelicate and grossly filthy expres- 
sion of this man's views on Christian morality reminds 
us of the apt saying of St. Jude: "By thy words thoa 
shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shall be 
condemned." 

It is not an agreeable task to attack a man's moral 
character, but Luther's mouth is to blame for the 
exposition of the corruption that seemed to be down 
deep in his heart. This so-called physician of souls,, 
while he cannot "heal himself," must yet needs mani- 
fest himself, as "raging waves of the sea," foaming 
out "his own shame"; because his tongue and his 
devices were "against the Lord, to provoke the eyes of 
His Majesty." It is well perhaps he should proclaim 
his sin "as Sodom, and not hide it," for the interests 
of humanity and to save "men of good will" from his 
poison. The serpent's rattle made itself distinctly 
heard in his unholy utterances and though he presumed 
to be the "doctor of doctors" and declared all besides 
"asses and rascals," his expression of the moral* views 
he entertained shows beyond peradventure that he was 
not a man in any way fit to lead others unto reforma- 
tion and sanctity of life. 

After Luther's break with Rome and when his piety 
grew cold, he gained a bad name for himself owing 
to his loose teachings on morality and his generaL 
lightness of behavior. To say the least, his pronounce- 
ments on delicate questions were rather lax, and, as 
might be expected, his conduct and example could not 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 3 IT 

but have been in keeping with them. It is well knowrt 
that he was pretty generally and often openly accused 
by his enemies, both Catholic and Protestant, of 
extremely grave moral delinquencies. No doubt 
there was considerable exaggeration in the accusations 
brought against him, but it nevertheless remains true 
that many of his faults and failings against morality 
cannot be denied or gainsaid. As a matter of fact 
he was openly blamed for his well known and impru- 
dent intimacy with Katherine Von Bora before his 
marriage and Melanchthon severely censured him for 
his lack of personal dignity, his loose behavior and 
coarse jests in the company of his intimates and even 
in the presence of the nuns he helped in violation of 
Germanic law to escape from their convents. 

Hieronimus Dungersheim, an eminent theologian of 
Leipzig, indignant at his conduct, which little became 
one who thought he was called to reform the Church 
and the age, puts this question in his "Thirty Articles" 
to Luther; "What are your thoughts when you are 
seated in the midst of the herd of apostate nuns whom 
you have seduced and, as they themselves admit, make 
whatever jokes occur to you? You not only do not at- 
tempt to avoid what you declare is so hateful to you 
(the exciting of sensuality), but you intentionally stir 
your own and others' passions. What are your thoughts 
when you recall your own golden words either when 
sitting in such company, or after you have committed 
your wickedness ? What can you reply, when reminded 
of your former conscientiousness, in view of such a 
scandalous life of deceit? I have heard what I will 
not now repeat from those who had converse with 
you and I could supply details and names. Out upon 
your morality and religion; out upon your obstinacy 
and blindness ! How have you sunk from the pinnacle 
of perfection and true wisdom to the depths of 
depravity and abominable error, dragging down count- 
less numbers with you! Where now is Tauler, where 
the Theologia Deutsch' from which you boasted you 
had received so much light ? The Theologia' condemns 



318 The Facts About Luther 



as utterly wicked, nay, devilish through and through, 
all that you are now doing, teaching and proclaiming 
in your books. Glance at it again and compare. Alas, 
you 'theologian of the Cross !' What you now have to 
show is nothing but the filthiest wisdom of the flesh, 
that wisdom which, according to the Apostle Paul 
(Rom. viii, 6), is the death of the soul and the enemy 
of God." 

The Leipzig University professor then goes on to 
refer to the warning which Luther himself had given 
against manners of talking and acting which tempt 
to impurity and continues as follows : "And now you 
set aside every feeling of shame, you speak and write 
of questionable subjects in such a disgraceful fashion 
that decent men, whether married or unmarried, cover 
their faces and fling away your writings with execra- 
tion. In order to cast dishonor upon the brides of 
Christ you (in your writings), so to speak, lead 
unchaste men to their couches, using words which for 
very shame I cannot repeat." 

To the testimony of this distinguished writer regard- 
ing Luther's unseemly behavior we might add that of 
many other reliable authors, but the foregoing is repre- 
sentative of all who lost respect for the man and who 
strongly protested against his flagrant violations of 
decency in speaking and treating of sexual questions. 

That he was consumed by the fires of fleshly lust he 
admits himself. Even when engaged, as we related 
in another place, in the translation of the Bible, Luther, 
in the year 1521, while living in the Wartburg, to which 
place this "courageous Apostle" fled in the disguise 
of a country squire and lived under an assumed 
name, wrote to his friend Melanchthon to say: "I sit 
here in idleness and pray, alas, little, and sigh not for 
the Church of God. Much more am I consumed by the 
fires of my unbridled flesh. In a word, I, who should 
burn of the spirit, am consumed by the flesh and by 
lasciviousness." (De Wette, 2, 22.) 

In the "Table Talk" he is recorded as saying: "I 
burn with a thousand flames in my unsubdued flesh: 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 319 

I feel myself carried on with a rage towards women 
that approaches madness. I, who ought to be fervent 
in spirit, am only fervent in impurity." 

Luther further tells that "while a Catholic, he passed 
his life in austerities, in watchings, in fasts and praying, 
in poverty, chastity and obedience." When once 
reformed, that is to say, another man, he says that: 
"As it does not depend upon him not to be a man, so 
neither does it depend upon him to be without a 
woman; and that he can no longer forego the indul- 
gence of the vilest natural propensities." (Serm. de 
Matrim. fol. 119.) 

"He was so well aware of his immorality," as we are 
informed by his favorite disciple, "that he wished they 
would remove him from the office of preaching." 
(Sleidan, Book II, 1520.) 

But the remedies for all this. Did he struggle and 
make issue with temptations ? Did he rebuke the devil 
and his onslaughts, or did he, like one deprived of the 
power of resistance, allow himself to become an easy 
prey to the wiles and the machinations of the tempter? 
Alas, he tells us that instead of being prepared for 
the attacks of the enemy of his soul, he prayed little 
in the hour when he was "consumed by the fires of his 
unbridled flesh." How, then, could he expect to come 
off victorious in the unequal and terrible struggle ? 

Lutherans often relate how when their hero was at- 
tacked by the devil he hurled an inkstand at the arch 
enemy. This was an ingenious method of defense, 
but something more effectual was urgently required ia 
the unpleasant circumstances. The ordinary usefuL 
and consecrated means for repelling Satan's onslaughts, 
such as prayer, penance and the use of the sacraments, 
were not, however, agreeable to Luther's tastes. Fancy- 
ing himself to be a wonderful physician of souls, he, 
in his resourcefulness, conceived new means and new 
methods which he thought would surely be helpful in 
the uncomfortable and dangerous meetings with his 
Satanic Majesty. What, think you, are they? Does 
he prescribe prayer, fasting, and the crucifixion of the 



320 The Facts About Luther 



flesh for the mastering of passion and the overthrow 
of the enemy of salvation as the Master ever enjoined ? 
No. His ways are not the ways of the Lord. "They 
are fools," he says, "who attempt to overcome tempta- 
tions by fasting, prayer, and chastisement. For such 
temptations and immoral attacks are easily overcome 
when there are plenty of maidens and women." 

How now can any one believe the exponent of such 
teaching to be an inspired man of God? Is it not 
horrible to think that any one in his senses could give 
utterance to such unbecoming language and prescribe 
such indecent methods for the overthrow of unruly 
passion? Did the corruption of his mind, as is plainly 
evidenced in his speech, induce to laxity of behavior 
and lead him to exemplify his teaching in grave moral 
delinquencies ? Corrupt teaching begets corrupt action, 
and hence it is difficult to believe that any one holding 
such principles and "consumed by the fires of his un- 
bridled flesh" could wholly escape in his own case the 
exemplification of his unhallowed pronouncements. But 
whether or not he used his own avowed remedies in 
temptations to lewdness, of one thing we are certain, 
namely, that his conduct after he left the Church was 
often open to just criticism. By his own admission 
he made no scruple of drinking deeply in order to 
drive away temptations and melancholy, and whilst 
his enemies may have gone too far in charging him 
with gross immorality, there is, however, much in this 
direction which cannot be ignored or excused. His 
ghastly utterances, his bubbling over with obscenity, 
his boiling spring of sensuality were known to all, and 
it could not be wondered at if men thought that these 
defects could only be explained and partially defended 
on the ground of an abnormal sexual condition which 
was supposed to have been heightened by licentious 
irregularities. 

In the "Analecta Lutherana" by Theodore Kolde, 
there is a medical letter of Wolfgang Rychardus to 
Johann Magenbuch, Luther's physician, dated June 
II, 1523, taken from the Hamburg Town Library, 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 321 

which is of a character to make one wonder on reading 
it whether Luther did not at one period suffer from 
syphilis, at any rate in a mild form. On this delicate 
matter any one may, if further information be desired, 
read Grisar, Vol. II, pp. 162, 3, 4, where all the details 
of the question are carefully and learnedly discussed. 
' With Luther's nasty writings and sayings at hand, 
coupled with the accusations of his friends and inti- 
mates regarding the looseness of his behavior, it is 
sheer recklessness and consummate audacity to hold 
him up to public gaze as a teacher and model of 
morality. His admirers may canonize him as the fore- 
runner of revolution, as the apostle of socialism, as 
the liberator of human thought, but the insult is too 
great, and the deception too easily discovered, when 
once the "Reformer" is spoken of in connection with 
morality. 

Many a time and oft when Luther was in the monas- 
tery he heard the inspired words, "Make your bodies 
a temple of the Holy Ghost." That is the great aim 
of the Christian religion. Christianity met paganism 
full of corruption and of impurity ; it came to conquer 
immorality by spirituality. It alone inculcated the idea 
that the greatness of man must consist in becoming 
master of his passions, and of his animal nature. It 
ever insisted that even the flesh must be sanctified. 
This idea took hold of the minds of men and was so 
deeply rooted that on all sides the Orders of those 
who by vows practised chastity and perpetual virginity 
began to multiply. This thought of chastity, both in 
the single and married life, the Church impressed upon 
all of her children in all generations. Around the 
nuptial chamber, she placed the sacrament of matri- 
mony as a sentinel and, upon the bosom of the virgin, 
she placed the laurel of her loving approval and 
motherly benediction. Woman was elevated and became 
the true companion of her husband, the educator of 
her children ; and the maiden, the virgin, became the 
cherished object of knightly courage and protection. 
Chastity was the motto written across the Christian 



322 The Facts About Luther 



horizon and engraved on the shield of the chevalier. 

To change all this, to deify indecency, decry celibacy 
and virginity and dishonor the married state, was 
Luther's Satanic desire and diabolical purpose. The 
evil effects of his destructive work have cursed the 
world during the past four hundred years and, even, 
in our own day, we find it has penetrated our homes 
to work havoc there through the divorce mill* and to 
tell men they are powerless in the midst of the allure- 
ments of life to resist animal proclivities. For mzny 
to-day, chastity in the single and married state is 
purely a matter of law, a matter of social etiquette, 
an external thing, something which is decried as an 
impossibility and as an encroachment upon natural 
demands. 

Luther, horrible to relate, with the gospel in his 
hand, taught his disciples, male and female, in the 
world and in the cloisters, that no man or woman 
could be chaste in primitive, much less in fallen nature. 
"Chastity or continence," said this vile man, "was 
physically impossible." In the most brutal frankness, 
he writes without a blush the following lines to a 
number of religious women : "Though," he says, "the 
women folk are ashamed to confess it, yet it is proved 
by Scripture and experience, that there is not one 
among many thousands, to whom God gives grace ta 
keep entirely chaste. A woman has no power over 
herself. God created her body for man and to bear 
offspring. This clearly appears from the testimony of 
Moses i, 28, and from the design of God in the con- 

# A few facts will show to what an extent the loathsome leprosy of 
divorce has spread in our country alone. The total number of divorces- 
granted in 1867 vas 27 per 100,000 of the population. Forty years 
later, in 1906, thei t were 86 per 100,000; thus, allowing for the increased 
Population, divorce had increased 319%. In 1887 there was one divorce 
for every seventeen marriages; in 1906 one for every twelve marriages, 
and at the same rate we will have in 1946 the appalling number of one 
divorce for every five marriages. 

During 1901 there were twice as many divorces granted among 
75,000,000 Americans in the United States as among the 400,000,000- 
souls of Europe and other Christian Communities. During the twenty years 
ended with 1906, Ireland had only nineteen divorces, or an average of 
less than one absolute divorce per year for her entire population of 
4,500,000. 

No loyal American and true Christian can view the divoree evil in* 
our country with other than feelings of the gravest alarm. 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 323 



struction of her creation." 'The gratification of sexual 
desire was nature's work, God's work/' as he cynically 
calls it, "and, as necessary, aye, much more so than 
eating, drinking, digesting, sweating, sleeping," etc. 
(De Wette II, 535.) We dare not repeat all he 
enumerates in his filthy catalogue. "Hence," said he, 
"to vow or promise to restrain this natural propensity, 
is the same as to vow or promise that one will have 
wings and fly and be an angel and morally worth about 
as much as if one was to promise God that he would 
commit adultery." 

The way in which this "glorious evangelist" explains 
his beastly theories in his coarse Latin and in his still 
coarser German, is such that it cannot be given here, 
"so full is it," to adopt Hallam's mild language, "not 
only of indelicacy but of gross filthiness." No defense 
can be set up for the indecencies of his expression 
which no Christian ear could listen to. He had the 
advantage of a monastic training which should have 
had a refining influence over his whole life and, no 
matter what hatred he bore the Church and her teach- 
ings, he should not have forgotten that his speech 
should be that of a gentleman and not that of a denizen 
of the underworld. The pity is that cudgel or other 
weapon was not lifted in threat against the theological 
pretender who taught, in virtue of his new gospel, that 
all women, Catholic or Protestant, outside those that 
contracted marriage, are necessarily unclean and 
impure. If Protestants hearing Luther's language can 
Iceep cool and restrain their indignation, it only shows 
how far religious bigotry can control all natural 
impulses of decency and honor. 

From the beginning of the world, men were taught 
to place a high value on personal purity and were 
directed to present their bodies a living sacrifice, holy, 
pleasing unto the Lord. This lesson was thoroughly 
impressed upon society ; and the holy of all times, even 
the virtuous sages of paganism and the professional 
? votaries of false gods, believed that continence was 
not only possible, but acceptable to the Deity. The 



324 * The Facts About Luther 



Incarnation of God and of a God conceived ^nd born 
of a spotless Virgin, elevated the holy teaching to a 
still higher degree and the sacred lives of Jesus and 
Mary, becoming the ideals of Christian behavior, 
caused religion to open up peaceful retreats the world 
over for generous souls, free agents, followers of 
evangelical counsels, to give strongest expression 
thereto for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, and 
of love of virginal continence. Enchanted by the 
example of the Saviour, men and women wished and 
strove to be as He was and, as a direct consequence, 
Christian celibacy and virginity blessed the world to 
teach it to rise triumphant over the passions of the 
human heart. When one is convinced that there is 
nothing here below really worthy of lasting regard, 
who has a right to prevent him from vowing to make 
God the eternal object of his love and affection? 

Luther knew full well the especial esteem the Church 
always entertained for celibacy, for virgin souls and 
for the state of consecrated continence. Sympathizing- 
with this spirit of Holy Mother Church, he himself 
went forth from kindred and father's house, from the 
surroundings and sweet ties of family affection, from 
the innocent inducements that open out before a young 
heart, to consecrate his life in holy chastity and to 
dedicate it to the service of Him who is alone without 
blemish. Then he did not express himself openly and 
declare chastity was impossible and a mere delusion, 
that licentiousness was permissible and natural, and 
that the gratification of the flesh was the aim of man. 
Far from it. On many occasions before his break with. 
the Church, we find him, as some of his Protestant 
supporters will be surprised to learn, extolling the 
religious calling and declaring it "as more pleasing in 
the sight of God than the marriage state . . . better 
on earth as having less care and trouble not in itself, 
but because a man can give himself to preaching and 
the Word of God . . . whosoever wishes to serve the 
Churches . . . would do well to remain without a. 
wife." In this Luther was right. He was in accord 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 325 

with a conviction common to men of all times, of all 
places and of all religions, that there is a manifest 
incompatibility of the priestly office with sexual rela- 
tions with women even in the bonds of marriage. He 
understood the Church's wisdom in not allowing her 
priests to marry, as is apparent from the fact that a 
wedded clergy must necessarily be separated from the 
queen of virtues and the mother of great self-devotion, 
charity, profound study and all that wins favor from 
God and man. Hampered by the ties of family and the 
cares of wife and children, how could the ambassadors 
of Christ ever fulfill the sublime commission entrusted 
to them by the great Eternal Priest who said : "Go, 
teach all nations under the sun ?" How could they as 
St. Paul says, "think of the things of God," be free 
to devote themselves entirely to His service and afford 
example to the people unless they led celibate lives? 

In spite, however, of all earlier pronouncements on 
voluntary chastity for Christ's sake, "Luther at 
bottom," as Father Johnston remarks, "hated the very 
idea of virginity. The reason that he extols it at times 
was because he could not explain Paul's plain praise 
of the same in first Corinthians. Fundamentally he 
was driven to depreciate it most of the time and to 
conceive a positive diabolical hatred of celibacy, in 
particular : driven to disparage virginity by his strange 
pessimistic theory of the hopeless depravity of man and 
lack of freedom of the will; driven to hate celibacy 
because of its connection with his own one time and 
hated priesthood and possibly because of the gibes of 
his Catholic opponents at his haste to wed." 

Luther in his heart of hearts had a low conception 
of male and female virtue and did not believe chastity 
outside of wedlock possible, except in such rare cases 
as amount to a miracle of Divine interposition. "Chas- 
tity," he says, "is as little within our power as the 
working of miracles. He who resolves to remain single 
should give up his title to be a human being and prove 
that he is either an angel or a spirit." "As little as we 
can do without eating and drinking, so it is impossible 



326 The Facts About Luther 



to do without women." "The reason is that we have 
been conceived and nourished in a woman's womb, that 
from woman we were born and begotten; hence our 
flesh is for the most part woman's flesh and it is 
impossible to abstain from it." (Tischr. 2, s. 20 S. 

We omit out of decency to quote more of Luther's 
vile utterances on this delicate subject. The thoughts 
that filled his depraved mind and reflected on the 
greater part of mankind led him on after his excom- 
munication to strive with diabolical energy to eradicate 
from the people's hearts the love for and belief in the 
possibility of chastity outside of wedlock. He now 
sets himself up very distinctly against the supernatural 
counsel, which the Master proposed to those who 
"will to be perfect" and who with largeness of heart, 
are "able to contain it." He knew that Christ sur- 
rounded himself with virgins. He knew that His 
forerunner, St. John the Baptist, was a virgin; His 
foster father St. Joseph was a virgin; His mother 
Mary was a virgin; all of His Apostles, except St. 
Peter, were virgins, who had "left all things to follow 
Him, and it is a tradition of the Church that St. Peter 
too observed continency from the time that he obeyed 
the call of the Lord to be "a fisher of men." He knew 
that St. Paul, too, was a virgin. He knew that from 
the apostolic times onward the conviction grew in the 
Church that men who exercised Christ's office and 
priesthood at the altar and handled His Sacred Body 
thereon were called on to practise the highest form 
of chastity and to consecrate their virginity to God of 
their own accord, confident in Divine help for the ful- 
fillment of the requirements of their holy and exacting 
calling. Luther knew all this and yet, in the perversity 
of his will and in spite of his better judgment, he 
deliberately closed his eyes to the facts, hardened his 
heart and resisted the counsels of the Lord. 

Christ, speaking of virginity, not by way of command, 
but by way of counsel, said, "he that can take it let 
him take it" and that His grace will be all-sufficient to 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 32T 

overcome the infirmity of nature. Luther in unbounded 
blasphemy contradicts this Divine utterance. He wilL 
no longer acknowledge such preaching. He, the doctor 
of doctors, considers it all folly and declares most 
emphatically that "it is impossible for any one to live 
single and be continent." To his distorted mind, the 
vow of chastity was an "impossible vow," "an abomina- 
tion" and "worse than adultery." In his desire to 
abolish and get rid of it, he is not ashamed to appeal 
"to priests, monks and nuns, who find themselves 
capable of generation," to violate their sworn promises 
and abandon their freely chosen state of celibacy. 
Unless they follow his advice, he considers nothing- 
remains for them but "to pass their days in inevitable 
self-gratification." "Parents," he said, "should be 
dissuaded from counselling their children to adopt 
the religious state as they were surely making an offer- 
ing of them to the devil." Thus with shameless 
effrontery, he declaimed like a maniac against religious 
vows and, so bitterly antagonistic was he, that he went 
so far as to declare "that the day has come not only 
to abolish forever those unnatural vows, but to punish,, 
with all the rigor of the law, such as make them; to 
destroy convents, abbeys, priories and monasteries and 
in this way prevent their ever being uttered." (See 
Wittenb. 2, 304 B.) To all this, every libertine from 
Luther's day down to the present, would respond with 
a hearty "Amen." Not so, however, the clean of heart, 
who appreciate the invaluable services that the Relig- 
ious, male and female, have rendered the world in all- 
ages and climes in every department of life. 

The great exemplar of virginity was the Lord Jesus 
Christ. The dissolute nailed Him to the cross. Ever 
since persecution has been the lot of the clean of heart. 
Luther and his followers had not the courage to con- 
tinue to make sacrifices, conquer their passions and 
bring their unruly bodies into subjection to Divine 
law and heavenly grace and, imagining others to be as 
weak, depraved and cowardly as themselves — no 
longer men enough to bear their self-imposed yoke o£ 



328 The Facts About Luther 

chastity — they even charged with a horrible hypocrisy 
the imitators of the virginity of Christ, whose glorious 
history is in veneration among the pure of heart the 
world over. In refusing to believe in the possibility of 
virtue and self-control and in persecuting the aspirants 
after perfection, they only prove to the disgust of the 
decent of all times that they have reached the lowest 
limits of brutality. 

Luther, however, had a remedy for all the abomina- 
tions he conjured up in his filthy mind against celibacy 
and virginity. In a most disgusting sermon, which 
he should have been ashamed to preach at Witten- 
faerg in 1522, he advanced in the crudest and most 
shocking manner his conviction that matrimony is 
obligatory on every individual. * "Chastity," he says, 
"is an abomination." "Religious vows are impossible 
to keep" and "he who desires to remain single under- 
takes an impossible struggle." The gracious ways of 
Providence and the free choice of individuals to 
determine their state of life are as nothing to the 
Founder of Lutheranism, who now decrees matrimony 
for all as the only remedy against the violence of 
corrupt and unruly passion. The words of God, 
"increase and multiply," found in Genesis i, 28, he 
thought, "are not simply a precept but much more than 
a precept; they enjoin a Divine work which is just as 
necessary as eating, drinking, digesting, sweating, 
sleeping, etc." After alluding to the words of Christ 
recorded in Matthew xix, 12, "and there are eunuchs 
who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom 
of heaven," he says: "He that does not find himself 
in any of the classes referred to ought to think of 
matrimony forthwith ... If not,*you cannot possibly 
remain chaste . . . you cannot withdraw yourself 
from that word of God, 'increase and multiply/ if you 
will not necessarily and continually commit the most 
horrible crimes." (Wittenb. Vol. V. 119 B.) In a 
letter written to Reissenbusch he repeats his claim, 
"that chastity is as little within the power of man as 
are other miracles and favors of God." Then he asks 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 329 

his friend, "Why do you hesitate and trouble yourself 
so much with serious reflections? It must and shall 
and will be ever thus and things will not be different* 
Put such thoughts out of your mind and behave 
courageously by entering into wedlock. Your body 
demands and requires it; God wills it and urges you 
to it. How will you get over this ? . . . Every day we 
see how difficult it is to observe conjugal chastity in 
matrimony and should we, outside of that state, resolve 
on chastity, as if we were not human beings and pos- 
sessed neither flesh nor blood?" (De Wette II, 637 
seqq.) 

The motives which Luther urged to induce all to 
enter wedlock were evidently far from being in accord 
with those which the Almighty intended in the conse- 
cration of the union of both sexes. But as he held 
matrimony to be a worldly thing, denied its sacramental 
character and refused to acknowledge it to be a type of 
that great sacrament, which is between Christ and His 
Church, we need not be astonished that he urges an 
additional motive to those already advanced for main- 
taining the obligation of marriage. Here it is, genuinely 
stamped with the usual Lutheran brand and bearing- 
the marks of the Reformer's abiding hatred against the 
Pope. To the single, he now cries out : "Though one 
may have the gift to live chastely without a wife, yet 
one ought to marfy to spite the Pope who insists on 
celibacy and forbids the clergy to marry." (Tischr. II, 
c. 20 S. 3.) Marry and spite the Pope. Do not mind 
whether you are called or not called to the married 
state. Rush into it. Do not weigh the consequences. 
The Pope insists on safe-guarding one of the evan- 
gelical counsels and he must not be suffered to do so 
longer. The way to weaken his influence and destroy 
his holy work is for all to marry. The motive was 
truly ingenious and in every way worthy of the 
inventive powers of the reformer. Needless to say, 
the strange advice was not generally heeded, for then 
and now most men have other and higher reasons than 
spiting the Pope for their entrance into married life. 



330 



The Facts About Luther 



Luther, notwithstanding the evident folly and 
weakness of his advice, still kept harping on the Pope. 
In spite fulness and in hatred of celibacy, he is now 
carried beyond himself and urges the violation of the 
laws of the Church which are framed for the safe- 
warding of marriage in the general councils of 
Christendom. 'To understand his course the better," 
Pr. Johnston reminds us, "we should know that there 
were many secretly in favor of his new doctrines, but 
bound to clerical celibacy, such as priests, nuns, and 
the Knights of the Teutonic Order. That these should 
liave followed Luther's example and repudiated their 
atows and married openly, was comprehensible and 
from their standpoint not at all surprising. But that 
is not what many of them did. Instead they were 
keeping concubines or at least were secretly marrying 
in a way that legally amounted to the same." Now 
-what is the advice that Luther gave such offenders? 
He tells them to contract such secret marriages and 
counselled certain parish priests living under the juris- 
diction of Duke George or the bishops to "marry their 
cook secretly." In a letter addressed to the Lords of 
the Teutonic Order dated March 28, 1523, Luther 
writes as follows: "Again I say that if it should 
happen that one, two, a hundred or a thousand and 
more Councils should decree that a priest should wed 
or do anything else that the Word of God commands 
or forbids, then I would expect God's mercy and much 
more for him who kept one or two or three females 
all his life than for him who weds a wife in accordance 
with such a decree. Yea, I would command in the 
name of God and advise that no one should wed 
according to such a decree upon the penalty of the 
loss of his soul, but that he should live in celibacy and, 
if this is not possible, that he may rely on God's 
mercy and not despair in his weakness and sinfulness." 
(Wittenb. 6, 244). A little further on he repeats that 
""one who keeps a female commits less sin and is nearer 
to God's grace than a man who would take a wife By 
permission of a Council." 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 331 

As we read the disgusting words addressed to the 
nobility of the Teutonic Order approving and coun- 
selling concubinage and secret immorality, we are 
amazed beyond the power of expression and the blush 
of shame rises to our cheeks. The fact that Luther 
counselled such secret illicit unions in defiance of 
ecclesiastical and civil law and considered them holier 
than those that honorably and openly complied with 
the regulations of the General Councils of Christendom, 
makes his advice and recommendation all the more 
abhorrent and detestable. His apologists may try ta 
explain away his advocacy of concubinage, but his 
filthy words remain to confront them at every turn 
and to tell the world that in base wantonness and 
horrible blasphemy they have never been equalled or 
surpassed by the most depraved of mortals. It is 
only preachers and writers like himself, men lost ta 
all appreciation of marital propriety, who attempt ta 
excuse the brazen manifestation of their master's cor- 
ruption of moral sense and dare call this advocate 
of concubinage and illicit matrimonial unions "a 
reformer" and a "servant of the Lord." Men of sense, 
men who take Luther's words as they read and consider 
the filth, obscenity, moral corruption and infidelity that 
constantly fill his pronouncements on the holy state 
of single and married life, are not deceived. The 
evidences of his depravity are so overwhelming and 
convincing that they are forced to the conclusion that 
this shameless advocate of brazen prostitution could 
not be and was not "a messenger of the all Holy God." 
To the clean of heart the idea is preposterous. As 
one thinks of this man's efforts to degrade human 
nature, it makes him feel almost ashamed to belong 
to the same human family. 

It is an awkward thing for a man without credentials 
to charge himself with the public conscience and to 
assume the position of an evangelist without discharg- 
ing the high obligations inseparably attached thereto. 
Luther was very proud of the pretended light which 
he thought he was spreading through his novel and 



332 The Facts About Luther 



immoral teachings. He delighted to tell his admirers 
how through his efforts religion had been made acces- 
sible to all. Before his time, he said : "Nobody knew 
Christ . . . nobody knew anything that a Christian 
ought to be familiar with. The Pope-asses obscured 
and suppressed all knowledge of heavenly things. " 
They were nothing short of "asses, big, rude, ignorant 
asses" and especially in all matters pertaining to Chris- 
tianity. "But now," he continues, "thanks to God, 
men and women know the catechism, they know how 
to live, to believe, to pray, to suffer and to die." 
(Walch XVI. 2013.) 

This was a proud boast of Luther and well might 
he feel elated did the wonderful change he conjured 
up in his vivid imagination actually come about. Of 
enlightenment, as conceived by him, there was a plenty. 
It was not, however, the enlightenment which the 
"Pope-asses," as he calls the Vicars of Christ's Church, 
had furnished the world for its uplift and sanctifica- 
tion. They, in their long rule of the Church of God, 
were never so unmindful of their sacred mission and 
the high obligations attached thereto, as to proclaim 
that the Decalogue had no longer any binding force, 
that vows made to God might be disregarded, and 
that fornication, divorce and concubinage were permis- 
sible to every blackguard who violated the sacred 
relations of the married state. If an opprobrious name 
were in order and, if it were permissible to confer 
such on one who earned it as well as Luther did, 
then it is not the Pope, but himself he should have 
called an "ass," for it was his braying that announced 
to men and women the new enlightenment in the in- 
decencies and gratifications of animal passions that 
degraded humanity, offended Christian sensibilities 
and ruined souls for time and eternity. 

But, it is time to get acquainted with a little more 
of the special kind of "enlightenment" Luther fur- 
nished the world and of which it was ignorant until 
"his blessed gospel" announced it for the delectation 
of the lawless and the dissolute in society. In the 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 333 



"Babylonian Captivity," which was issued in 1521, he 
denied the sacramental character of matrimony, and 
thereafter, especially in a filthy sermon, delivered 
at Wittenberg in 1522, for which he should have been 
stoned out of the pulpit, he gave utterance to senti- 
ments which did not contribute to raise wedded life 
in public esteem. His aim seemed to be to destroy 
the sanctity of marriage and thereby work the destruc- 
tion of the social order organized by God, whose 
<:orner-stone is the family. Religion, civil order, 
manhood and womanhood are there matured and 
fostered and protected and started upon the way of 
duty and civilization. If the wells are poisoned, disease 
will spread everywhere; if the home is defiled the 
whole of life is profaned and corrupted ; if the sacred 
bonds of the home and the ties of the family are 
weakened, the demons are unchained and let loose upon 
humanity. It is for this reason that the Catholic Church 
with diligence and perseverance watched over the 
holy state of matrimony, which Christ elevated to 
the dignity of a sacrament, making it a union never 
to be dissolved. "For better for worse till death do 
lis part," was the motto of Christendom. But Luther 
steps forward, with "his evangel" in hand, and both 
in theory and practice condemns the Divine command- 
ment: "Let every man have his own wife and let every 
woman have her own husband." He proclaims instead 
the permissibility of bigamy and of the system of 
polygamy on the installment plan through divorce, a 
system which naturally opened the flood-gates of 
sensuality and threatened the very existence of society. 
According to his new teaching any man who is tired 
of his wife can leave her for any reason whatsoever 
and, forthwith, the marriage is dissolved and both 
free to marry again. "The husband may drive away 
_ his wife; God cares not. Let Vashti go and take an 
Esther, as did the king Ahasuerus." Does not such 
a permission open the gates to successive polygamy, 
free love and legalized prostitution? 

Luther had a close friend by the name of Carlstadt, 



334 The Facts About Luther 



who left the Church of his fathers and becami a 
disciple of the new gospel of freedom. Just to show 
practically how he had absorbed the new teaching of 
license inculcated by the prophet of Wittenberg, he 
broke his priestly vows and became the husband of 
two wives. Bruck, the Chancellor of the Duke of 
Saxe-Weimar, in 1524, consulted Luther on the 
scandalous incident. The Reformer, not in the least 
abashed, openly and distinctly stated: "I confess that 
I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for 
it does not contradict the Scripture. If a man wishes 
to marry more than one wife he should be asked 
whether he is satisfied in his conscience that he may 
do so in accordance with the word of God. In such 
a case the civil authority has nothing to do in the 
matter/' (De Wette, second edition, 459.) Many 
other clear statements wherein Luther sanctions polyg- 
amy might be reproduced here, but the one given 
above will suffice for the present. 

It is certain that Luther not only advocated the 
vile teaching of polygamy, but, that he also sanctioned 
it in specific cases, notably that of the Landgrave 
Philip of Hesse. This potentate was one of the most 
licentious men of his day and in consequence of his 
excesses suffered from a violent secret malady. In 
a petition addressed to Luther, supplicating permission 
to take an additional wife, he stated that "he lived 
continually in adultery" and that "he neither could 
nor would abstain from impurity." This unfaithful 
man knew of Luther's free views on matrimony and 
he appealed to him to obtain his heart's desire, not 
only, as he said, "to escape from the snares of the 
devil," but "to ease his conscience in case he died on 
the battlefield in the cause of the Lutheran gospel." 
Luther was sorely perplexed. He dared not repudiate 
the principle of polygamy he had adopted from the 
very commencement of his reformation and yet he 
feared to sanction the promulgation of a general law 
allowing polygamy to all on account of the scandal 
and difficulties it would occasion. The Reformer had 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 335 

hoped, as he said, that Philip of Hesse would "take 
an ordinary, honest girl and keep her secretly in a 
liouse and live with her in secret marital relations." 
(Lauterbach's Diary, Seidman, 196.) 'The secret 
marital relations," he maintained, "of princes and great 
•gentry is a valid marriage before God and is not unlike 
the concubinage and matrimony of the Patriarchs." 
(Tischreden Von Concubinal der Furster.) The inter- 
esting penitent, apparently so tender of soul, was not, 
liowever, to be thwarted in his shameful designs. He 
loiew that bigamy was a crime, punishable with death 
according to German law, and in order to avoid most 
serious consequences, which in less turbulent times 
would eventuate to his discomfort, he felt it was to 
his interest to have some approbation of authority for 
liis shameful petition for a double marriage and thus 
offer a sedative to his conscience in the thought that 
he lived in lawful wedlock. The dissolute prince 
urged his indecent proposition, until finally Luther 
and all of his Wittenberg theologians shamefully 
•acceded to his request and granted him permission to 
take a second wife during the life time of the first 
with the sole condition that she should not be publicly 
recognized. The document, which expresses the grant 
of dispensation, accompanied with a representation of 
the difficulties of the case and under condition of its 
feeing kept secret, was written by Melanchthon and 
covers about five pages of De Wette, a Professor of 
Protestant Divinity at Basle. This document, signed 
hy Luther and seven of his associate theologians, 
amongst other things, says: "If your Highness has 
altogether made up your mind to marry another wife, 
we declare under an oath that it ought to be done 
secretly. . . .No conditions or scandals of any impor- 
tance will be the consequence of this (of keeping the 
marriage secret), for it is nothing unusual for princes 
to have concubines; and although the reason could 
not be understood by ordinary people, nevertheless, 
more prudent persons would understand it and this 
modest way of living would please more than adul- 



336 The Facts About Luther 



tery. . .nor are the sayings of others to be cared for, 
if our conscience is in order.' Thus and thus far 
only do we approve of it." "For what was allowed 
in the law of Moses concerning marriage, the gospel 
does not revoke or forbid. . . .Your Highness has, 
therefore, not only the decision (testimonium) of us 
all in case of necessity, but also our foregoing consid- 
eration." "That is to say: We allow the marriage, 
but at the same time we wish you also to consider 
whether it would not be more advisable to give up 
all thoughts of the double marriage." 

Philip of Hesse, having obtained the sanction he 
wanted, cared little for the singular advice of the 
reformed theologians. The document granting him 
the longed-for dispensation was issued December 10, 
1539, and Philip of Hesse launches out with the 
approval of the Father of the Reformation and his 
associates on his course of concubinage and adultery 
a few months later, early in 1540. Philip's wife, the 
daughter of the Elector, gave a written consent to 
the ignominious arrangement after the unfaithful 
husband "had clearly proved to her that the double 
marriage was not against the laws of God." In return 
she was promised that she would always have the 
distinction of being the chief wife and only her chil- 
dren were to have a right to the honors and political 
privileges of the father. In keeping with the whole 
disgusting proceedings the Rev. Denis Melander, one 
of the eight who signed the letter granting the dispen- 
sation, and who had three wives living, officiated at 
the shameful and scandalous ceremony of handing 
over to Philip his chosen concubine. "Melander," as 
Verres remarks, "was the right man in the right place 
and he might be depended upon to dwell in the wedding 
sermon on the peace of conscience with which this 
matrimonial alliance might be entered into and to 
inveigh against the Papal tyranny which had for so 
long a time curtailed the carnal freedom of Chris- 
tians." 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 337 

Shortly after the unholy alliance of Philip with 
Margaret Von der Saal, a lady of honor to his sister, 
the secret of their union became public and the scandal 
occasioned widespread consternation in the newly 
formed Lutheran camp. When Melanchthon discov- 
ered that the news of the double marriage was spread 
broadcast "he sickened almost to death with remorse" 
on account of the sanction he had given to it. The 
less impressible Luther, however, was not so easily 
overcome as his truculent partner in the loathsome 
and illegal transaction. To deny the truth was an 
end devoutly to be wished for, as Luther was afraid 
of the evil consequences to the public who would come 
to learn of the Prince's double marriage. In his 
anxiety to prevent the blame from being attached to 
his name, he pretended in speech and in letters to 
his intimate friends that he knew absolutely nothing 
about the whole affair. After consultation with Bucer, 
who was the chief agent in the arrangements, and 
some other intimates, it took a short time for Luther 
to decide that the rumor of the permission given to 
Philip to take a second woman and the farcical 
marriage should, be met with a flat contradiction; 
"for," as he said, "a secret yes must remain a public 
no and vice versa." (De Wette — Seidemann, VI., 
263.) Then Luther went so far as to declare: "What 
would it matter if for the sake of greater good and 
of the Christian Church one were to tell a good, down- 
right lie?" (Lenz. Brief wechsel, 1, 382.) 

No doubt Luther was heartily ashamed of granting 
to Philip the dispensation, which he issued through 
human respect and in order to prevent the loss of 
a powerful ally in the advancement of the cause 
of the new gospel. The Landgrave, however, 
wanted no 'big lie" to be told about the conces- 
sion made in his behalf and he threatened to 
expose Luther, who was trying to reverse himself 
before the public. "You will have to remember," 
fhilip said to Luther, "in case you withdraw your 
approbation that we should be forced to put before 



338 The Facts About Luther 



the accusers your written memorial and your signa- 
ture to show what (concubinage) has been allowed 
to us." This threat threw Luther into a state of 
wild anger. "I have this advantage," he said: "that 
your grace and even all devils have to bear witness 
and to confess: first, that it was a secret advice; 
secondly, that with all solicitude I have begged to 
prevent its becoming public; thirdly, that if it comes 
to the point, I am sure that not through me it has 
been made public. As long as I have these three 
things I would not advise the devil himself to start 
my pen. . .1 am not so much afraid for myself, for 
when it is a question of writing I know how to 
wriggle out of the matter and to leave your grace in 
it — a thing which I do not mean to do if I can help 
it." (De Wette — Seidemann VI., 273.) The unpleasant 
matter, which caused widespread scandal, was in a 
short time gotten over and peace being re-established 
between the unholy combatants, the polygamous Philip 
and his vile counselor became the closest friends. 

Here we may be permitted to remark that it is a 
matter of common knowledge that Luther's relations 
with truth, honesty and uprightaess were not always 
what might be expected from one who claimed his 
mouth "was the mouth of Christ." Not to speak of 
his general attitude of misrepresentation of everything 
Catholic, we have his frank admission of his readi- 
ness to make use of what he calls "a good, downright 
lie" "in the complication consequent on Philip's 
bigamy and his invitation to the Landgrave to escape 
from the dilemma in this way." It is as clear as day- 
light that the reformer not only believed in lying 
and duplicity, but that he was, moreover, prepared 
to make any and every sacrifice to uphold the same. 
To the specimens of Luther's teaching given above, 
we have only, in confirmation of what we allege, to 
add one out of many of his celebrated utterances, 
viz., "that in order to cheat and to destroy the Papacy, 
everything is allowed" (De Wette, 1, 478.) If a 
Catholic, especially a Jesuit, had ever played fast and 



Luther as \ Religious Reformer 339 

loose with truth as Luther did, what an outcry, and 
justly so, there would be! In order to divert atten- 
tion from Luther's behavior regarding the obliga- 
tion of speaking with truth and honesty, our enemies, 
in the hope to fan the passions and hatreds of the 
purblind, ignorant, prejudiced classes in the com- 
munity, are constantly insinuating and charging that 
it was not the Reformer, but the Jesuits, who were 
the real propagators and defenders of the infamous, 
absurd and damnable principle that "the end justifies 
the means." That calumny will not down, although 
it and a thousand others have time and again been 
exploded. However, no scholar to-day, no person of 
sane mind, can be found to give the infamous insinua- 
tion a moment's attention, for the good and sufficient 
reason that the absurd doctrine is not and never was 
held by Jesuits or any other Catholics. It is incum- 
bent on non-Catholics to name the Jesuit who an- 
nounced the despicable principle that "the end justifies 
the means/' Let them name the time, the place, the 
circumstances of such an announcement. If they can 
give proof, however meagre, for the alleged charge 
sustaining such teaching, the grateful thanks of 
every God-fearing man, woman, and child in the 
community will be theirs. This, however, no one 
can do. Great scholars have undertaken that task 
and found their labors to be in vain. Grown-up men 
of intelligence who have made any research on 
the subject are no longer frightened by the silly 
bugbear invented to deceive and inflame the passions 
of the ignorant and dishonest of heart. The malicious 
charge, unfounded and incapable of proof, is thrown 
out in many quarters merely to hide and save from 
view its real author, propagator and defender. Whilst 
Luther did not actually formulate the words embodying 
the absurd principle, the teaching he announced and 
the action he adopted were always and ever in the 
direction of the end justifying the means. To Luther 
and to no one else may be traced directly and unerr- 
ingly the fatherhood of this unsavory, unhallowed, 



340 The Facts About Luther 



unmanly and un-Christian principle. Until non- 
Catholic preachers and writers can produce a single 
utterance directly or indirectly attached to the Jesuits 
of so abominable a nature as we have shown of 
Luther, the unanimous verdict of an honest and impar- 
tial public will condemn them to silence. 

The double marriage of Philip and the relation of 
the Reformer to the bigamy of his powerful disciple, 
was made the occasion of a remarkable speech in this 
country in the House of Representatives January 
29, 1900. (Cong. Record, Vol. 33, p. 1101.) Con- 
gressman Roberts of Utah, charged with polygamy, 
which he could not deny and for which he was not 
allowed to take the oath of office, called the attention 
of the country to Luther. "Here," he said, "in the 
resident portion of this city you erected — May 21, 
1884 — a magnificent statue of stern old Martin Luther, 
the founder of Protestant Christendom. You hail 
him as the apostle of liberty and the inaugurator of 
a new and prosperous era of civilization for man- 
kind, but he himself sanctioned polygamy with which 
I am charged. For me you have scorn, for him a 
monument." And he cited, as well he might, passages 
from Luther's writings to support his views. How 
truly wonderful is the perversity of human nature. 
That same man who bears witness in favor of Mor- 
monism, which is a new development of private 
judgment in religious matters among us in America, 
and is in direct hostility to the groundwork of our 
society, and, in the full sense of the word, to our civili- 
zation, is cited on occasions and hailed by Lutherans 
and other clergymen in our cities in the twentieth 
century as the one whom the German nation has to 
thank for their home life and their ideals of married 
life. Let the wives and mothers of America ponder 
well the polygamous phase of the Reformation before 
they say "Amen" to the unsavory and brazen laudations 
of the profligate opponent of Christian marriage, Chris- 
tian decency and Christian propriety. Compare the 
teachings of Luther on polygamy with those of Joseph 



Luther as a Religious Reformer - 341 

Smith, the Mormon prophet and visionary, and see 
their striking similarity. Mormonism in Salt Lake. 
City, in Utah, which has brought so much disgrace to 
the American people, is but a legitimate outgrowth of 
Luther and Lutheranism. No wonder that the 
wretched institution of divorce came along to degrade 
womanhood and revive the usages of barbarism. 

Numerous respectable Protestants who know Luther 
in his historical setting, admit that he cared little or 
nothing for the sacramental character of marriage and 
that from the lofty eminence of a once Catholic pulpit, 
in the presence of men and women, married and 
unmarried, young and old, he positively sanctioned 
adultery in the clearest and most unmistakable manner. 
It is true that he only allows it in certain given circum- 
stances and that he requires the previous approval of 
the community, but the stubborn fact remains that 
he unhesitatingly sanctioned it. 

Karl Hagen, a celebrated Protestant historian, says : 
"He (Luther) went so far as to allow one party to 
satisfy his propensities out of wedlock that nature 
might receive satisfaction. It is quite evident that his 
view of matrimony is the same as prevailed in antiquity 
and again appeared in the French Revolution." We 
beg to note that the high ideal of home life and the 
married state that the Reformer so openly and brazenly 
taught the German nation and which his imitators so 
strongly and lovingly uphold before an unsophisticated 
public, is by the Protestant testimony just cited, the 
same as existed among the Pagans of old and later 
on in the French Revolution, whose forerunner was 
Luther. 

Returning for a moment to the adulterous marriage 
of Prince Philip of Hesse, to which bigamous alliance 
Luther gave his sanction, we wish to remind the reader 
that according to Kostlin, the most prominent modern 
champion of the Reformer, "this double marriage was 
not only the greatest scandal, but the greatest blot in 
the history of the Reformation and in the life of 
Luther." ( Kostlin, 2, 481, 486.) We may add with 



342 The Facts About Luther 



Fr. O'Connor, S. J., "that the blot is so great as to 
blot out every possibility of one ever looking upon 
Luther as a Reformer sanctioned and commissioned by 
Almighty God. For marriage is one of the most 
important and most essential elements both of the 
social and religious order. And God would not allow 
a Reformer really chosen by Himself to trample under 
foot the law concerning the unity of marriage, which 
was promulgated by Christ, the first born Reformer 
of the World." 

Luther preached and wrote much on the universal 
obligation of marriage. He was anxious that all should 
enter wedlock, because his low estimate of human 
nature led him to believe that "no man or woman could 
remain chaste outside of matrimony." Holding such 
views it is rather surprising that he waited until his 
forty-second year to give practical effect to his teaching 
by marrying a nun who broke her enclosure before 
breaking her vows. Within the circle of his scheme 
of ecclesiastical Reformation, Luther included the 
marriage of priests and monks and, as he was one, why 
should he not put his own views into practice, join 
the crowd of the lawless ones and hold up his infamy 
to the public for imitation? 

But, if we still have any regard for Divine things, 
then we cannot forget that Luther, in order to wed, had 
to commit an act of infidelity towards God and dis- 
regard his vow of celibacy; No excuse can be offered 
to palliate or condone his infidelity. 

The sacred obligations of vows are frequently men- 
tioned in the Bible and are of Divine institution. These 
vows are clothed with a solemn character and are 
forever binding. If the God in which Lutherans 
profess to believe is not a myth, but a personal God, 
to whom we sustain certain relations and with whom 
certain relations can be formed, then, as a Protestant 
writer puts it : "The idea involved in a vow was that of 
a definite contract or covenant entailing a whole series 
of after consequences depending upon the condition 
being fulfilled, a promise and an acceptance mutually 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 343 

sealed by which both parties in the covenant were 
affected. Even as God comes forth out of Himself to 
make a covenant with His creatures and confirms it by 
an oath, so may man go forth from himself, sealing 
the covenant by his promise." (Carter, "The Church 
and the World.") 

In the very first epochs of the history of God's 
people, vows, free, deliberate promises made to the 
Almighty of something of superior excellence, received 
a special Divine sanction. Let the maligners of vows 
turn to the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis and they 
will read of Jacob's vow, the first of which a record 
has come down to us, while the blessings he afterwards 
received, proved that his vow was looked upon with 
Divine favor. In the one hundred and thirty-first Psalm 
David "vowed a vow" to build a temple to God, and 
how acceptable such a vow was to the Divine Majesty 
we learn from the seventh chapter of the second Book 
of Kings. The tenor of many other passages in the 
Old Testament shows that one of the special ways by 
which the Jewish people honored and worshipped God 
was the taking of vows. All along from the beginning, 
the taking of vows had received among them, time 
and again, the Divine sanction ; to it they had recourse 
when pressed by calamity or when demanding par- 
ticular favors, or again when striving to make amends 
for past obstinacy. They felt, and they knew revela- 
tion, that the sacrifice of the will through the obligation 
of a solemn promise was most acceptable to the Lord. 
Of this they had a suggestive proof also in the exact- 
ness with which He required the fulfillment of vows. 
"When thou hast made a vow to the Lord, thy God/' 
it was said in the twenty-third chapter of Deuteronomy, 
"thou shall not delay to pay it, because the Lord, thy 
God will require it. And if thou delay, it shall be 
imputed to thee for a sin." 

The practice then of taking vows to God comes down 
to man from the tradition of primitive revelation. The 
Mosaic dispensation confirmed that practice anew and 
Christ, the Lord, ratified the moral teaching of the 



344 The Facts About Luther 

past, blessing with an especial grace all those who 
aspired to follow Him more closely by an entire 
offering of themselves to the Divine goodness by 
solemn engagement or vow. 

Luther was a member of a Religious Order and a 
priest of the Catholic Church. Of his own free choice, 
for the greater love of Christ and as a means to reach 
perfection, he engaged to practise chastity and bound 
himself to it by solemn promise. He knew that his 
consecration to the religious calling had a deep signifi- 
cance, and he knew, moreover, as a professor of 
Scripture, it was laid down in Numbers xxx, 2, that 
"he who takes a vow shall not break his word ; he 
shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his 
mouth." Having taken the vow to live his life in the 
observance of celibacy and having failed to keep the 
covenant and contract he solemnly made with God, 
his infidelity was nothing short of the commission of a 
most grievous sin. And not only was the violation of 
his vow an offense against the law of God, but it was 
a crime against the laws of the State then existing. 
In his day not only the Church but the State also pro- 
hibited priests from marrying. The reader is requested 
to remember this point in dealing with Luther's marital 
venture. To violate law, divine, ecclesiastical and civil, 
never disconcerted this instigator of revolution, 
upholder of adultery and defender of bigamy, divorce, 
and polygamy. It came easy to this "lawless one" to 
offend against legitimate authority, but, in violating 
the laws of God and disregarding his vow of chastity 
by taking a partner unto himself, he committed an act 
of perfidy and his union, even from a legal standpoint, 
was no marriage. Katherine Von Bora was only his 
companion in sin and the children brought into the 
world through the unholy alliance were illegitimate 
children. 

This is sad reading, but there is nQ help for it. 
Luther claimed to be a "reformer" and as such he must 
be inexorably judged. Think you now that the man 
whose teachings and whose behavior run counter to 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 345 

the laws of God, of His Church and of the State 
deserves for a moment to be considered a "reformer" ? 
All law-loving citizens protest against such an outrage. 

Luther, of course, has his defenders and they are not 
devoid of ways and means to support his evil doings 
at all costs. In this specific case they claim, notwith- 
standing all Scriptural teaching to the contrary, that 
their master had a right to break his vow of celibacy, 
because "it was a sin in him to take such a vow." Mark 
the last words and then reflect on how they hold him 
up as the great and only impeccable one. But, passing 
this over for the moment, we ask who is to be the 
judge of his right to break a vow and by what code 
of laws was such a vow made to the Lord God not 
binding and of perpetual observance ? 

The reasons that impelled Luther to marry, as 
gathered from his writings, are enumerated by Grisar 
as follows: I. Because it was necessary to shut the 
mouth of those who spoke evil of him on account of 
his relations with Bora. 2. Because he was obliged 
to take pity on the forsaken nun. 3. Because his father 
wished it. 4. Because the Catholics represented matri- 
mony as contrary to the Gospel. 5. Because even his 
friends laughed at his plan of marrying. 6. Because 
the peasants and the priests threatened him with death 
and he must therefore defy the errors raised by the 
devil. 7. Because God's will was plainly apparent in the 
circumstances. Melanchthon's reason, viz., "that man 
is impelled to marriage by nature Luther does not 
himself bring forward." But whatever may have been 
his motives the fact remains that he established himself 
with one escaped nun and lived with her as faithfully 
as he could. This sacrilegious breaking of vows by 
monk and nun cannot be condoned by ingenious excuses 
and we object to his defenders calling his alliance with 
Katherine "matrimony" and speaking of it as "family 
life." This view might be regarded as "slander," as 
"papistical malice," because his admirers, closing their 
eyes to the facts, do not want the truth to prevail. But 
there is no "slander" or "papistical malice" in the 



346 The Facts About Luther 



statement. Indeed we wish we were not under the 
necessity to record it. If there be any blame in pre- 
senting this version, remember it does not belong to 
us, but to no less an authority than Melanchthon, 
Luther's co-laborer and intimate friend. A letter writ- 
ten by this 'light of the Reformation" to Camerarius 
gives all the proof needed to support the contention. 
This letter runs as follows: 

"Greetings: Since you have probably received 
divergent accounts concerning Luther's marriage, I 
judge it well to send you my views on his wedding. On 
the thirteenth of June, Luther married unexpectedly 
Bora without giving any information beforehand to his 
friends. In the evening he invited to a dinner the 
Pommer (Burgenhagen), Lucas, the painter, and Appel, 
and he (Luther) performed the usual ceremony. You 
will perhaps be amazed that he can -be so heartless in 
such times when noble people live in trouble, and that 
he should lead a more easy life and thus undermine his 
usefulness when Germany stands in need of his 
judgment and ability. But, I believe, that it came about 
in this manner. He (Luther) is light-minded and 
frivolous to the last degree ; the nuns pursued him with 
great cunning and drew him on. Perhaps all this 
association with them has rendered him effeminate, or 
inflamed his passions, noble and high-minded though 
he be. He seems after this fashion to have been drawn 
into the untimely change in his mode of life. It is 
clear, however, that the gossip concerning his previous 
criminal intercourse with her (Bora) was false. Now 
the thing is done it is useless to find fault with it, or to 
take it amiss, for I believe that nature impels man to 
matrimony. Even though this life is low, yet it is holy 
and more pleasing to God than the unmarried state. 
I am in hopes that he will now lay aside the buffoonery 
for which we have so often found fault with him, for 
a new life brings new manners, as the proverb runs. 
And since I see that Luther is to some extent sad and 
troubled about this change in his way of life, I seek 
very earnestly to encourage him that he has done 



Luther as a Religious Reformlr 34? 

nothing, which, in my opinion, can be made a subject 
of reproach to him. He would, indeed, be a very 
godless man who, on account of the mistake of the 
doctor, should judge slightingly of his doctrine. ,, 
(Sessions of the Academy of Munich, 1876, p. 491. 
Original in Chigi Library in Rome.) 

From this letter it is quite evident that the ideals 
and motives which prompted the "Reformer" to marry 
were so low, so degrading, so pagan, that they vexed 
and worried his friends and intimates, who were by 
no means candidates for canonization and were not 
proof against the pleadings of the devil's advocate. 
Melanchthon acknowledges that Luther's nature and 
"former buffoonery" compelled him to this union with 
Katherine Von Bora. His remarks in che letter as to 
certain rumors no doubt concern suspicions which were 
cast upon Luther's relations with Bora before their 
marriage. His conduct with Bora previous to wedding 
her called forth from both friends and enemies severe 
and apparently well-grounded criticism. Luther himself 
admits that his marriage was hastened precisely because 
of the talk that went the rounds concerning him and 
Bora. Burgenhagen said that "evil tales were the 
cause of Dr. Martin's becoming a married man so 
unexpectedly." And Luther himself wrote to his 
friend, Spalatin, that "I have shut the mouth of those 
who slandered me and Katherine Bora." It is not 
proven that he was openly immoral with her before 
marriage, but it is certain that there was so much talk 
going on about his intimacy with the ex-nun, that he 
thought it advisable to marry her sooner than he had 
expected. Melanchthon in his letter to Camerarius 
says that he took his Katie in haste and unbeknown 
to his friends. Was this union even according to civil 
law valid? The jurists of those days and of his own 
following did not recognize the marriage as valid. 
Even we in "free America" have not progressed as far 
as that. 

Melanchthon, though he did not object to Luther's 
marriage on principle, was nevertheless anything but 



348 The Facts About Luther 



edified by his action. In his letter to Camerarius, he 
states that the "Reformer" was rather sad and 
disturbed on account of his entrance upon the new 
state of life. Did the voice of conscience denouncing 
the* unholy alliance have something to do with his 
depressed and forlorn condition? We expect his 
partisans to reply in the negative, but we fail to see 
how any one who had so grossly violated the holy 
laws of the religious state and of marriage could 
possess peace and rest of soul, unless his heart was 
closed to all appeals of Divine suggestion. Petticoat, 
government in the case of ex-priests never leads to 
Paradise. No wonder, as his friend Melanchthon tells 
us, he was depressed in spirit and sore of heart. 

Heretofore we have seen to some extent how Luther 
by precept and example defiled religion, disregarded 
morality and appealed to all the evil propensities that 
flesh contains. It is now time to speak of the 
shameless brutality and indescribable vulgarity that 
habitually in public and private characterized his 
utterances, which were of such a low, gross, filthy 
nature that they would startle even a pagan. Almost 
all of his biographers admit that his language was 
invariably coarse and vulgar, imprudent and impetu- 
ous, but their description falls short of the reality, 
because they are either loath to offend their readers 
or are afraid to expose the man in his real character. 
If the old saying be true that "out of the abundance 
of the heart the mouth speaketh," then what must we 
think of Luther's heart when from the depth of it he 
threw out with its every pulsation such utterances as 
to give a veritable nausea to refined and decent man- 
hood? This foul-mouthed evangelist has forever on 
his tongue the words, "hell, devil, damn, rascal, thief, 
fool, ass, villain" and many others that cannot be 
repeated to ears polite. Hell and the devil seem to 
have ever been uppermost in his thoughts, for there 
are no words that occur so frequently in his books. 

In 1 541 Luther published a dirty little tirade entitled 
"Hans Wurst!' It was directed against Henry, Duke 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 349 

of Brunswick, who had the courage to attack the 
reformer and tell him what he thought of his ways 
and doings. Though this book is of small compass 
the devil's name is mentioned no less than one hundred 
and forty-six times. Perhaps the same thing may 
be true of the words "lie," "liar," etc. Amongst the 
names he applies to his adversary we give a few like 
"dirty fellow," "the devil of Wolfenbuttel," "a 
damned liar and villain," "the donkey of donkeys," 
"that damned Harry," "devil Harry" and "Harry 
devil," "whose name stinks like the devil's dirt," "an 
arch-assassin and bloodhound whom God has sen- 
tenced to the fire of hell and at the mention of whose 
name every Christian ought to spit out." He addresses 
the Duke as follows : "Thou beautiful image of thy 
hellish father," and asks "how could such a block- 
head presume to write a book, until you have heard 
a . . . . of an old sow. Then you may open your mouth 
and say: Thanks to you my beautiful nightingale: 
here is a text which is meant for me." He tells 
Henry that the Church from which he apostatized is 
"the devil's Church," "a whore-church of the devil," 
"an arch-whore of the devil," "an infernal school and 
a stench den of the devil," "an infernal whore and 
the devil's last and most abominable bride," "the 
devil's brother." Thus "damned," - "devil" and 
"whore" are the choice words found in nearly every 
line of this mad production and the pity is that he mixes 
the sacred Word of God constantly in his revolting 
filth. In vileness of language and bitterness of hate 
this book has no equal. We defy any Protestant to 
read Luther's Hans Wurst without coming to the 
conclusion that its author was mentally deranged and 
that his coarse invective was the production of a 
raving madman. No wonder that Zwingle, notorious, 
immoral and corrupt himself, speaking of Luther's 
eloquence, says, "the time for the Word of God to 
prevail is far off for there is too much heard of 
'enthusiast/ 'devil/ 'knave/ 'heretic/ 'murderer/ 
'rebel/ 'hypocrite/ and like cussing, dirty words." 



350 



The Facts About Luther 



It is said by Luther's admirers that his vulgarity 
was the fault of his time. Perhaps it was, but may 
not the statement be highly exaggerated? To say 
that his vulgar speech was the fault of his age seems 
to carry with it an insult to the German nation which 
was so far advanced in the sixteenth century that it 
was well-known for its reverential and respectful use 
of language. Even if it were true that the ordinary 
classes were less choice in their expressions than in 
our days, it is not too much to expect that one who 
posed as a "reformer" should at least use the speech 
of an educated gentleman. The excuse alleged for 
Luther's abominations will not hold good, for history 
tells us that many of his friends and intimates of 
those days were shocked and disedified by his constant 
use of the most brutal and unseemly language. We 
can prove by one quotation, and there are hundreds 
to the same effect, that his own contemporary, 
Bullinger, the Swiss Reformer, who was neither a 
"Papist" nor a "Saint," stood aghast at what he calls 
Luther's "muddy and swinish, vulgar and coarse 
teachings." "Alas," he says, "it is as clear as day- 
light and undeniable that no one has ever written more 
vulgarly, more coarsely, more unbecomingly in matters 
of faith and Christian chastity and modesty and in all 
serious matters than Luther. There are writings by 
Luther so muddy, so swinish, Schenhamporish, which 
would not be excused if they were written by a shep- 
herd of swine and not by a distinguished shepherd of 
souls." (Waraften Bekenntnis, fol. 10, p. 95.) With 
such testimony and that of many others equally reli- 
able, it is useless for the Reformer's apologists, unless 
they regard the people as coarse and devoid of intelli- 
gence, to consider his abominations and indecencies 
of speech as the fault of the times in which he lived. 
The truth is, it was the fullness of his heart that was 
perpetually bursting through all bonds of conventional 
propriety and decency. 

The cesspool seems to have been the garden that 
furnished his choicest flowers of rhetoric. - To be 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 351 

plainer still, "it is a fact," Fr. Johnston says, "that 
Luther's usual talk took its imagery most often from 
the privy. In this connection, perhaps, it is significant 
that Luther admitted that it was precisely in the 
privy of the monastery that he received from God 
the revelation of his famous doctrine about justifica- 
tion by faith alone. 'By the grace of God, while 
thinking on one occasion in this tower over those 
words, 'The just man lives by faith alone/ the Holy 
Ghost revealed the Scriptures to me in this tower/ 
Protestant biographers have naively attempted to 
show that this place was not the monastery toilet; 
but there is no reasonable doubt." 

"This is significant," the same learned writer 
continues, "for, as above noted, it is simply amazing 
how habitually Luther made use of the imagery sug- 
gested by such a place. When he wishes to vomit 
his wrath against the Pope or the Cardinals, his 
favorite word is that word which indicates the 
contents of a privy. I forbear from repeating it. 
This particular word (the common popular English 
word for evacuations) is constantly on his lips. 
Repeatedly he says that if the Pope should send him 
a command to appear before him: "I should. . . . upon 

his summons." "I sarcastically said that 'no 

lawyer should speak till he hears a sow.' " The reader 
can find plenty of other instances of the use of this 
word in Grisar Vol. Ill, 226, 232, 235, 298. Concom- 
mitant with the use of this filthy word, is the use of 
another signifying that portion of the human body 
which functions the same. Those expressions I 
cannot repeat here. See for yourself Grisar, e.g., 
in, 229, where he tells the devil to "kiss ." 

"The vomits of the human stomach are also a 
frequent word wherewith to express his rage against 
his enemies. For instance, he says, that the Pope 
"vomits" the Cardinals. Again the "monks" are "the 
lice placed by the devil on God Almighty's fur coat." 
"No sooner do I pass a motion but they smell it at 
Rome." Then note this specimen of stable boy's wit 



352 



The Facts About Luther 



apropos of the "Pope-ass" mentioned before. "When 
I (the Pope-ass) bray, hee-haw, hee-haw, or relieve 
myself in the way of nature, they must take it all as 
articles of faith, i.e. Catholics." That other filthy word 
common to people who suit their language to privies 
was also constantly on his lips, employed in endless 
variations." 

"The most amazing aspect of this vulgarity is that 
Luther brings the very name of God into conjunction 
with just such coarse expressions. Thus in trying to 
explain how far God is or is not the author of evil, 
he says : "Semei wished to curse and God immediately 
directed his curse against David. God says, 'Curse 
him not and no one else.' Just as if a man wishes to 
relieve himself I cannot prevent him, but should he 
wish to do so on the table here, then I should object 
and tell him to betake himself to the corner/ " 

The reader may consult Grisar's monumental work 
on Luther if he is anxious to learn more about the 
filthy, scandalous, and indecent utterances of this vile 
man. To all who have hitherto known little of his 
actual obscenity and vulgarity of speech the study 
suggested will be not only surprising, but illuminating. 
After such an inquiry, no honest man with any preten- 
tion to decency would be found in the ranks of those 
who trample on the truth and insist in spite of such 
glaring faults that this man was an "instrument of 
God" for the reformation of society. 

It is appalling that men should take this filthy talker, 
whose hopelessly dirty language indicated the morally 
diseased state of his mind, as a guide to expound 
Eternal Law and that they should hang upon his 
words, hold him up for imitation and entrust to him 
their salvation. It is pitiable but true, that men have 
eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not, they 
have hearts and feel not. O ! that the eyes and the 
ears and the hearts of our separated brethren, if their 
faculties are not blunted, would come to recognize the 
unspeakable character of the Heresiarch's utterances, 
his obscene remarks, his vulgar jokes, his habitual 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 353 



nasty references to sexual matters, and discover in time 
that this open, brazen and shameless violator of all 
conventional decency could not in any sense have been 
raised up by the All-Holy God to lead men to the 
Kingdom of Heaven. 

However outrageous to Christian feeling and ab- 
horrent to Christian principle was his habitual filthy 
talk, it is far surpassed in vileness and obscenity when 
he treats of womanhood, a fertile theme for his 
dirty tongue and pen. On this subject he was quite 
at his ease and allowed himself singular license. In 
the "Colloquia" no fewer than a hundred pages are 
devoted to the fair sex. In this work he surpasses 
himself in vulgarity and shows his brutality in inde- 
cent references to women. No one could quote him 
in this respect without the blood rushing to his head. 
His warmest biographers are ashamed of his vulgar 
and unmanly references to women. The filthy expres- 
sions he recorded in his books were so habitual with 
him that he even used them in his own home before 
his companion and the children. "Certainly," Fr. 
Johnston says, "no Protestant woman can read them 
without — I will not say utter shame and womanly 
horror — but without indignation that any man, above 
all a spiritual leader and cleric at that, could speak 
of her sex with such ordinary common familiarity and 
coarseness and vulgarity and downright obscenity; 
that could joke at her sex in its most sacred and 
venerable moral and physical aspects, taking a stable 
boy's unclean delight at rude witticisms over poor 
woman's physical differentiation from man; that 
could make her very body the inspiration of jokes — 
all evincing a cynical and vulgar contempt for woman 
as such ; that could even have the vulgarity to lift the 
covers of the nuptial bed and disclose its sacred secrets 
to the gaze of others. Had any Catholic writer dared 
to utter a fraction of what Luther thus wrote and 
said, he would be an eternal and shamefu 1 reproach to 
the Church he so unworthily represented.'* 

To give any idea, even the faintest, of this man's 



354 



The Facts About Luther 



filthy and loathsome language would be impossible 
unless one is willing to descend into the gutter and 
wade in obscenity. The original sources are extant, 
and any one who wishes to consult them may do so 
if he is prepared for the shock of his life. Then he 
will discover that even the Bullingers and Zwingles 
of his own time were weak indeed in their descrip- 
tion of Luther's language when they upbraided him 
for its "doggishness, dirtiness and lasciviousness." It 
is so downright disgusting and hopelessly obscene that 
no one can excuse or condone it. As his friend, the 
Protestant Kostlin puts it, "his was a vehement, 
vulcanlike nature." Just so: but these vehement, 
vulcanlike natures are the very ones the Vice Purity 
Committees find in plenty in certain quarters of our 
modern cities. 

Fr. Johnston says : "From a standpoint of morality, 
Luther's teachings and practical advice and example 
in conversation were infinitely below the moral 
standard hitherto held by the very Church he reviled 
and constantly below even the standard now generally 
accepted by the Protestants themselves. His claims, 
therefore, to 'reforming' the Church, are pathetically 
weak. Instead of teaching a purer morality he taught 
a lower. There is nothing in his teaching, by either 
pen or word of mouth, that is calculated to increase 
the love of purity, or of even conjugal fidelity, which 
in the Catholic Church has developed the fairest 
blossoms of maidenly chastity and conjugal love. A 
man or woman, who is sexually weak, will look to 
him in vain for advice wherewith to increase his or 
her strength in resisting the great passion — rather 
they will find in his word the opposite. This is no 
time to mince words. Therefore, I say deliberately 
that from his own words Martin Luther must be 
held responsible for bringing into the world the lowest 
standard of morality ever advocated by a leader 
amongst Christians — so low that I defy a Protestant 
to read him, though I would advise no Protestant 
woman to do so if she be not ready to read with moral 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 



355 



safety. Both will feel considerably befouled by the 
reading." 

Neitzsche correctly said of Luther that "he had the 
courage of his sensuality." We grant that much, but 
it is most painful and decidedly nauseous to deal with 
such "courage" and be compelled to descend into the 
cesspool of his immoralities, both of teaching and 
behavior. The task of dealing with the man who 
won for himself the reputation of being the most foul- 
mouthed and coarsest of his age is far from being 
either agreeable or pleasant. Although we have not 
given a fraction of the indecencies that were habitu- 
ally on his lips we have furnished sufficient specimens 
of his ribaldry and obscene allusions to the unmen- 
tionable parts of the human body, its functions and 
sexual differentiations, to show that his language, 
character and example were not such as one expects 
to find in a professed reformer of Christianity. We 
would rather not expose to our readers the unspeak- 
able vulgarity usually characterising his utterances and 
we would much prefer not to repeat for the public 
his own confession to the effect that he received his 
imaginary revelations in a privy, the imagery of which 
colored and tainted too many of his expositions of 
those revelations. 

But Luther's partisans persist in forcing him upon 
public attention and they have only themselves to 
blame if, under the lime-light of actual quotations, his 
true words and doctrines and character are exposed to 
thinking minds, who by the thousands will come to 
see him in all his ugliness and deformity, and be 
forced to admit on the grounds of modern historical 
research that he could not have been directly or indi- 
rectly called by God to reform His Church. 

In our heart of hearts, we pity the man, regret his 
abuse of Divine grace and deplore his life-long antag- 
onism to Divine and human law ; but when those who 
are ignorant of the facts resurrect and force this man 
on public notice in the role of a "reformer," "a 
liberator of humanity," "a model of domestic life" 



356 



The Pacts About Luther 



and "an instrument of God for the uplift of society," 
the interests of truth demand that such misrepresen- 
tation ought not to go unchallenged, and that the real 
portrait of the man as he actually was ought to be 
given to the people. 

The most scientific Lutheran historians now no 
longer make an attempt to deny his many and flagrant 
personal shortcomings. It is only those who are 
ignorant of the facts : that he proclaimed to the world 
that chastity is impossible and a delusion, that licen- 
tiousness is permissible, and that the gratification of 
the flesh is the aim of man or, those who knowing 
them deliberately close their eyes to his sinful teaching 
and abominable immoralities, persist in believing that 
this moral leper and father of divorce and polygamy 
was a man of God chosen to "reform" the Church of 
Christ. Such men are not in a frame of mind to 
accept the verdict of Luther's contemporaries nor are 
they willing to accept the results of the best historical 
research supplied by Lutheran authorities, which 
overwhelmingly testify to their hero's immorality of 
speech and teaching. In their ignoble course they are 
unfortunately not so intent on spreading the truth as 
they are in strengthening the Lutheran people in their 
errors. 

The well-known rage and madness against the 
Papacy that gradually came upon Luther and 
consumed him to his last breath, making his contem- 
poraries suspect they had to deal with one possessed 
by the devil, has descended to many of his advocates. 
Like their master, heedless of right or wrong or danger, 
they rave like maniacs against the truth as preached 
by Christ's Church to keep their followers in ignorance 
and prevent their return to the faith of their fathers, 
in which alone can be found rest and peace and eternal 
happiness. Their efforts to injure religion, its clergy 
and institutions may be "much thought of by fools," 
as Melanchthon, Luther's friend, co-laborer, co-re- 
former and co-hater of the Papacy once said of his 
master's writings, but they cannot and will not prevail 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 357 

against the Church which Christ founded and willed 
all men to accept under penalty of eternal damnation. 
Luther's imitators had better be wise in time and 
understand before it is too late that where their master 
failed there is no hope of their escape other than by- 
seeking refuge in the bosom of the Mother Church 
which he maligned, abused, and opposed, but which 
still continues, as if he never existed, to execute her 
heavenly mission and to invite all to be followers of 
Him, who alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.'* 

In this little work we have had no desire to libel 
Luther's person, distort his doctrine or misrepresent 
his life work. We would willingly allow him to 
remain in his grave; but as his friends insist on 
resurrecting him we have no alternative but to show 
the disciples of a system which is the child born 
of a great lie, and nursed and fostered in heresy 
and infamy, that Luther by his own works and 
teachings was a malicious falsifier of God's truth, 
a blasphemer, a libertine, a revolutionist, a hater of 
religious vows, a disgrace to the clerical calling, an 
enemy of domestic felicity, the father of divorce, the 
advocate of polygamy and the propagator of immor- 
ality and open licentiousness. These charges are serious, 
but we beg to remind you that we have not inter- 
preted or edited Luther as he took the liberty to do 
with the Scriptures and as his friends did in the case 
of Melanchthon's letter to Luther and the modern 
issues of "The Table Talk." We have merely quoted 
him from reliable sources and made him his own 
accuser and judge. The genuineness and authenticity 
of his statements on religious and moral questions 
can neither be doubted nor refuted. If any surprise 
or scandal in exposing his degrading and debasing 
sentiments results, the blame rests not with those 
who picture the man as he really was, but with Luther 
himself and his advocates, Who have for the last four 
* centuries deceived the world by representing him as 
a "Reformer," and a "God-inspired man." 
Luther himself, be it remembered, felt keenly the 



358 



The Facts About Luther 



vulnerability of his character as is evident from the 
following significant words : 'This is what you must 
say; whether Luther is a saint or a scamp does not 
matter to me; his doctrine is not his, but Christ's. 
Leave the man out of the question but acknowledge 
the doctrine." No. We cannot do this. We cannot 
leave you out of the matter and accept your doctrine 
till you give proof that you are a "saint" and not a 
"scamp." Your Kostlins and other partisans may 
obey your orders, and hold that your "vehement and 
vulcanlike nature," as they describe you, was not 
incompatible with your role of a religious reformer. 
We, however, cannot separate you from your utter- 
ances and actions. Your character must be taken into 
the count, and as you posed in the role of a reformer, 
we expect in all decency, to find you a "saint," and 
not a "scamp." Which of these designations fits you 
the better? If you had been a man raised up by 
God to preach His doctrine and had led a life such 
as to prevent the finger of scorn from being raised 
against you, why did ,you complain so bitterly about 
the lamentable results of the teaching you wished 
acknowledged? As the life of a man is, so is his 
teaching and its results. Listen to your own confes- 
sion. "God knows," you said, "how painful it is 
for us to acknowledge that before the advent of the 
gospel everything was peaceful and quietude. Now 
all things are in ferment, the whole world agitated 
and thrown upside down. When the worldling hears 
it, he is scandalized at the disobedience of subjects 
against the government, rebellion, war, pestilence, the 
destruction of Kingdoms and countries, untold unhap- 
piness as the result of the doctrine of the gospel." 
(Walch 7, 2556.) Just so. You preached a gospel 
of your own manufacture and ignored that of Christ. 
What could you expect from your pride and rebellion 
but the spread of indifference to religion and an 
increase of immorality? Had you been loyal to the 
Church of your fathers and been actuated by her 
saving principles of reform, the results of your life 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 359 

work would not have been revolution, rebellion and 
war, but rather contentment, peace and true happiness 
such as ever follows in the wake of the saints of 
God. 

Three hundred years go by. It is a long time. 
What Luther said of his work in his day, others, 
who were loyal to him and acquainted with the 
lamentable facts, confirmed and amplified. Hear this 
wail of distress from no less a man than the Lutheran 
theologian, who, in the early part of the last century, 
compiled the reformer's works in five large volumes. 
De Wette says: 'The dissolution of the Protestant 
church is inevitable; her framework is so thoroughly 
rotten that no further patching will avail. The whole 
structure of evangelical religion is shattered, and few 
look with sympathy on jts tottering fall. Within the 
compass of a square mile, you hear four, five, six 
different gospels. The people, believe me, mark it 
well ; they speak most contemptuously of their 
teachers, whom they regard either as blockheads or 
knaves, in teaching these opposite doctrines. . .grow- 
ing immorality, a consequence of contempt for 
religion, concurs also as a cause to its deeper downfall. 
. . .O Protestantism, has it, then, at last come to this 
with thee, that thy disciples protest against all 
religion? Facts, which are before the eyes of the 
whole world, declare aloud that this signification of 
thy name is no idle play upon words." 

Nearly a hundred years have rolled by since the 
preceding lines were penned and from that time to 
the present, the De Wettes have been telling the 
world how Luther's work of reformation has waned 
and how it is gradually degenerating into humani- 
tarianism. Should you want proof, take up some of 
the recent biographies of Luther written by his 
admirers and learn the appalling indictment they 
frame against the whole religious system of which the 
Reformer is the father and defender. In one of these 
of recent date, "the author without intending it, makes 
it evident that Protestantism is not a religion at all. 



360 The Facts About Luther 

It has no connection with God Almighty. It does 

not make for holiness of life. Its object is not the 
service of God. It does not concern itself with the 
salvation of souls. Its aim is simply to do good to 
one's fellow-man ; not spiritual good, — that is out of its 
purview, — but whatever will be conducive to his world- 
ly comfort and advancement. Neither the service of 
God, nor sanctity of life, nor the salvation of souls 
is permitted to stand in the way of its achievements." 
Assuredly, if Professor McGiffert's Picture of 
Protestantism is correct, "the sooner," that excellent 
weekly "America" says, "thinking people leave it the 
better." 

In the days of Luther, one of his contemporaries 
cried out, "Do open your eyes and your hearts, you 
dear Germans, and use your reason and do not allow 
yourselves to be led along by his (Luther's) coarse 
Turkish mind. Can the natural mind, say nothing of 
the spiritual mind, conceive that Luther had a drop 
of honor in him, to say nothing of the fear of God? 
God have mercy on such blindness. ,, (Anatomiae 
Luther p. I, p. 48 quoted by Jarke.) 

That advice is pertinent to our own times. Assuredly 
it is blindness not to recognize that Luther's Protes- 
tantism, except in America, is mostly a part merely 
of the state-machinery of the different countries in 
which it exists. Its various creeds are obsolete, effete 
and not even the members of the sects which are sup- 
posed to hold them, pay the slightest attention to their 
declarations; indeed, in greater part, are profoundly 
ignorant of what their declarations are. Protestantism, 
in brief, has gone on disintegrating and dissolving 
until no one knows or can tell precisely what it is. 
Only one uniform, constant movement can be dis- 
tinguished amidst its continual, whirling eddyings, 
and the direction of that movement plainly is towards 
rationalism. The dividing line between Protestantism 
and outspoken rationalism is invisible. There is none. 

Men of sense which will you hear, the Church of 
Christ, One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, which calls 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 361 

you to sanctity and uprightness of life, or the hirelings 
who, as St. Paul says, "by pleasing speeches and good 
words" "seduce the hearts of the innocent" and "make 
dissensions contrary to the doctrine" which the Master 
announced to free, vivify, and save the world? 

To help all who are anxious to come to a knowledge 
of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus and His Church, 
it may be well to recall that Luther before he formally 
separated himself from obedience to Rome and when 
he seemed to abhor such a course, declared "I never 
approved of a schism, nor will I approve of it for all 
eternity." In a letter written by him in 15 19 to the 
then reigning Pontiff Leo X. and quoted in the History 
of the Reformation by that partisan Merle D'Aubigne, 
he says, "That the Roman Church is more honored 
by God than all others is not to be doubted. St. 
Peter and St. Paul, forty-six popes, some hundreds 
of thousands of martyrs, have laid down their lives 
in its communion, having overcome hell and the 
world ; so that the eyes of God rest on the Roman 
Church with special favor. Though nowadays every- 
thing is in a wretched state, it is no ground for 
separating from the Church. On the contrary, the 
worse things are going, the more should we hold close 
to her, for it is not by separating from the Church 
we can make her better. .We must not separate from 
God on account of any work of the devil, nor cease 
to have fellowship with the children of God who are 
still abiding in the pale of Rome on account of the 
multitude of the ungodly. There is no sin, no amount 
of evil, which should be permitted to dissolve the bond 
of charity or break the bond of unity of the body. 
For love can do all things and nothing is difficult to 
those who are united." 

These words have the true ring in them and the 
pity is that Luther ever forgot their significance, for 
they not only contain a strong and unanswerable testi- 
monial in favor of the Catholic Church, but they 
define the only position worthy of the true Christian 
and sincere reformer intent on the improvement of 



362 



The Facts About Luther 



the unfaithful of Christ's Kingdom on earth. The 
Church is the only society upon earth where revolu- 
tion is never necessary and reform is always possible. 
On the Divine side the Church is always perfect, on 
the human side she is a mixture of good and evil. 
Reform is always in order, but separation never. 
When reform is needed, it must, in order to be blessed, 
begin within and not without the Church. Separation 
from the Church is not reform. To stand up in 
God's Church and to cry out for reform of real abuses 
and scandals, fired with genuine zeal and pure love 
for the beauty of Christ's spouse, is a noble attitude. 
Such zeal, such love, and such interest is capable of 
doing all things. Had Martin Luther fought it out 
on this line his name would have been handed down 
with benediction and praise along with the great 
names of Hildebrand, Bernard of Clairvaux, 
Borromeo of Milan and Ignatius of Loyola, to all 
tuture generations. But undying loyalty to principle 
was not one of Luther's characteristics. His arro- 
gance and self-sufficiency so dominated him that from 
a reformer he became a revolutionist. Although he 
declared that "no cause could become so great as to 
excuse sep? ration from the Church," yet he allowed 
himself to be overcome by a radical spirit of free 
individualism against the Divine authority of the 
spouse of Christ and, under the mere plea of a resus- 
citated and purified Gospel, he substituted another 
foundation for that which the Master Himself had 
placed and led a religious revolution which was 
both wrong in principle and wrong in procedure. 
The specific work he inaugurated abetted fresh 
divisions, created new sects and bred interminable 
dissensions to the injury of the Kingdom of Christ. 
Humanity has paid bitterly during the last four hun- 
dred years for his rebellion against the Christian 
religion. The variations of his system of private 
judgment have left the more active intellect of 
Protestants everywhere to-day to question not so 
much this or that doctrine of Christianity as the why 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 363 

they are Christians at all. Thus the foundations 
designed by Dr. Martin Luther for Christianity after 
four hundred long years of experience have crumbled 
away almost entirely and nothing remains for intel- 
ligent Protestants but the alternative of either entering 
the fold of the Catholic Church to remain Christians 
or becoming agnostics, which is a mild word for 
atheists. 

•Luther's work, as the plain historical facts conclu- 
sively show, has proven an unsuccessful experiment. 
It was the greatest of blunders. Like all similar 
movements, in the past started in opposition to the 
One, true Church of God, it was destined to fall to 
pieces and terminate in self-extinction. It had no 
internal consistency, or individuality, or soul, to give 
it any capacity for permanent propagation. Its teach- 
ings were an innovation and, according to their author, 
caused an increase of moral corruption such as was 
not known since pagan days. Triumph it could not. 

Four hundred years 'have passed since Luther's 
Reformation scheme was given to the world and in 
spite of all the attacks which the Church has had to 
sustain from heresy, she and her Supreme Head 
remain. The overruling arm, which in its wondrous 
movements confounds the schemes of wicked men, 
interfered to preserve the religion of Jesus Christ 
which though so mysterious in its doctrines and so 
opposed to corrupt nature in its morals, remains in 
open daylight in every quarter of the world to enlighten 
and guide and lift up and heal human nature. In spite 
of calumny, in spite of popular outbreaks, in spite of 
cruel torments, the Church lives on to unfold to a 
wicked world the purity of her morals, the sublimity 
of her mysteries, the truth of her doctrines, the majesty 
of her worship and the hope of eternal life with which 
she inspires her members. No other religion goes 
back to Christ; no other religion claims Him as 
Founder; no other dares to speak in His name and 
infallibly to address itself by His Divine authority to 
the nations and the peoples of the world. Why? 



364 The Facts About Luther 



Because no other religion, according to our Lord's 
promise, is built upon a rock, on one and the same 
faith, on one and the same Church government, on 
the same complete unity, with the guarantee of His 
abiding presence and enduring protection till the end 
of time to safeguard the truths and means which He 
gave for the salvation of those who would believe and 
follow Him. 'There is not," then, as the Protestant 
Macaulay says, "and there never was on this earth 
an institution so well deserving examination as the 
Catholic Church." 

Such an examination can only emphasize the fact 
that the world has no need of a new morality or a new 
religion. The ideal morality and the true religion 
exist. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the true Leader 
in the onward and upward march of humanity, gave 
the world His doctrines and His principles of morality 
as the standards and ideals of all true human progress 
and genuine reformation. These unchangeable and 
enduring standards and ideals He communicated and 
made over to His Church, which He empowered with 
His Divine authority to speak in His name and to 
convey to all mankind all things whatsoever He had 
commanded till the end of time. In this Divinely 
established religion and in no other, men possess the 
grace and the force which are ever directed towards 
and needed for the reform, the uplift and the sancti- 
fication, not only of the individual, but of society at 
large. If humanity would be led aright it must be 
led by men imbued with the spirit and the teaching 
of Christ's religion, men who will embody in their 
lives the perfection of virtue, purity and sanctity and 
who will by word and example proclaim aloud the old, 
Divine, immortal principle which has stood the test of 
the ages, that "righteousness exalteth individuals and 
nations." 

There is no other way to meet the problems oiour 
civilization, which are the problems of every other 
civilization that has gone before us or will come after 
us, and to determine man in his actions, in the family, 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 365 

in business and in his civic relations to government. 
It is useless to perfect our institutions unless we seek 
first to perfect the members of society. Democracy 
will not save men, material prosperity will not save 
them, nor will intellectual or artistic progress save 
society ; only the effort to "grow in all things like Him 
who is Oiur head, Jesus Christ," will save the indi- 
vidual and save mankind. Without Him, who "is the 
Way, the Truth, and the Life" and without His 
religion, which upholds and preaches His standards 
and ideals, there can be no rejuvenatiqn and perfec- 
tion of either the individual or of society. We may 
organise, systematize, tabulate and use all the 
resources known to the boasted science of the period, 
but all will be useless to cope with the modern or 
the prevailing conception of human nature; the mod- 
ern conception of man's origin and destiny; and all 
the other fallacies which constitute to : day the very 
essence of the spirit of worldly progress. Perfec- 
tion based on this conception cannot be acquired. 

Human nature was created by God and remains 
fixed. God is a necessity for us. Our hearts are 
made fcfr God and they will, not be satisfied until 
they rest in the love and knowledge of Him. AH 
due and proper perfection begins and ends in Him 
to whose image and likeness man is created. Only 
those peoples are truly cultured whose impelling 
motive is the perfection of the individual based on 
this conception; whereas that*people is retrograde in 
whom there is wanting a proper understanding of the 
dignity of man. Before our days people have turned 
their back on God and reverted to the decay and bar- 
barism that followed the civilizations of Babylon and 
Rome. In an age like this, when everything is called 
in question, when the various relations of life are 
loose and undefined and when the very air is preg- 
nant with hostility to religion we cannot but look 
with alarm for the future of the nations if they go 
on unchecked in their course of pure naturalism and 
secularism, indifferent to the light of supernatural 



366 



The Facts About Luther 



faith and engrossed in striving to rise above the natural 
by purely natural means. 

Unrest, agitation and widespread discontent, 
inherited from the religious upheaval of the sixteenth 
century, prevail throughout the world. The decadent, 
retrogressive and ruinous policies advanced by Martin 
Luther and upheld by his followers, distracted society, 
divided Christianity and alienated thousands from the 
source of all true progress only to lay the foundations 
of an atheism which is eating out the very vitals of 
all social and Christian life. The world is weary of 
all this. It needs social justice, it needs mental repose, 
it needs a reform of inorals; in a word, it needs 
religion. There can be no real peace, unalloyed 
happiness and genuine progress until it is brought 
back to the first principles proclaimed by Mother 
Church and held throughout the centuries; principles 
which subdued barbarism and tamed savagery; prin- 
ciples which renewed the face of the earth and spread 
knowledge, civilization and contentment among the 
nations of the universe; principles which gave founda- 
tion to human society and established peace and order 
by the wholesome doctrine of authority and respect 
for the rights of all. 

Why not, then, labor to make the world Catholic, so- 
ciety Christian and progress permanent by imbuing the 
people with the knowledge and the spirit of the Sermon 
on the Mount? The task is as noble as it is just; as 
great as it is full of reward for time and eternity. 
When there shall prevail the tender charity, which 
Christ, the Founder of the Church, taught and exem- 
plified in His life and which obliges every one to labor 
for the happiness of others with as much interest as 
for his own, this earth will become a Paradise and 
the innumerable woes that now make it desolate — 
ambition, avarice, libertinism, war, fraud, pauper- 
ism and the other scourges, mainly the effect of 
our vices — will in a great measure disappear. "To 
restore all things in Christ/' as the great apostle Paul 
directs, to bring about the grand and sublime order of 



Luther as a Religious Reformer 367 



things so much desired on all sides and to promote 
the welfare of society and our salvation, it is neces- 
sary for all to be on guard against the false teacher 
and his destructive principles and, come what will, to 
remember that the watchword of all who would really 
and sincerely bring about reform must ever be the 
words of Christ, the true Leader of men: "Seek ye 
first the Kingdom of God and His Justice." 

May He Who holds in His hand the hearts of all 
and Who alone knows the bounds He has assigned 
to the rebellious sects and to the afflictions of His 
Church, cause all His wanderers soon to return to 
His unity! Separation from His Church means, 
logically and practically, no Church. No Church 
means no Christianity. No Christianity among intel- 
ligent men means no religion at all and no religion 
*mam c *riim.to the souls of men for time and eternity. 




(•' 



THE BOOK for CATHOLICS and NON-CATHOLICS 



Cbe Beauties of tbe Catholic Church 

Or, Her Festivals and Her Rites and Ceremonies 
Popularly Explained 

By VERY REV. F. J. SHADLER 

PAPER COVER, POSTPAID ... 30 CENTS 

8vo. size. 500 pages. Introduction by Rt. Rev. P. R. Lynch, D.D., Bishop 
of Charleston, S. C* Written in the form of dialogue, so true to human nature, 
and from the days of Socrates, accepted as the best and most efficient form of 
presenting even abstruse subjects without tiring the mind. The best book on 
the subject in the English language. 



CONTENTS. 

Introduction to American Edition v 
Translator's Preface viii 

Introduction. 

Of the Ceremonies of the Catholic 
Church in General i 

PART I. 

Of the Feasts and Ceremonies of the 
Ecclesiastical Year. 

Chapter I. From the First Sunday 
in Advent to Septuagesima Sun- 
day 13 

Chapter II. From Septuagesima 
Sunday to Passion Sunday 21 

Chapter III. From Passion Sun- 
day to Maundy or Holy Thurs- 
day 30 

Chapter IV. Good Friday and Holy 
Saturday 41 

Chapter V. From Easter to the 
Feast of the Ascension of Our 
Lord 68 

Chapter VI. From the Feast of 
the Ascension of Our Lord to 



the Feast of Corpus Christ!.... 88 
Chapter VH. Of the Feast of 

Corpus Ch rist! . . . . e 109 

Chapter VIII. Of the Minor Feasts 

of Our Lord. 127 

Chapter IX. Of the Feasts of the 

Blessed Virgin Mary 146 

Chapter X. Of the Feasts of the 

Blessed Virgin Mary (continued) 162 
Chapter XI. Of the Feasts of the 

Blessed Virgin Mary (continued) 185 
Chapter XH. Of the Feasts of the 

Saints 200 

Chapter XIII, Of the Feast of the 

Dedication of a Church. 219 

Chapter XIV. Of the Feast of the 
Dedication of a Church (con- 
tinued) 238 



Chapter XV. Of the Feast of All 
Saints and the Commemoration 
of the Faithful Departed 259 

PART n. 

Of the Ceremonies Employed in the 
Administration of the Sacraments 



Chapter I. Of the Sacraments of 

Baptism and Confirmation 290 

Chapter II. Of the Holy Commu- 
nion and the Sacrifice of the 

Mass • 31 o 

Chapter HI. Of the Mass (con- 
tinued)- — The Sacerdotal Vest- 
ments and .the Sacred Vessels.. 333 
Chapter IV. Of the Mass (con- 
tinued) — The Prayers and Cere- 
monies of the Mass 345 

Chapter V. Of the Mass (con- 
tinued) — The Prayers and Cere- 
monies of Mass from the Pre- 
face to the End of Mass 36 3 

Chapter VI. Of the Mass (con- 
tinued) — Use of the Latin Lan- 
guage at Mass, Incense at Sol- 
emn Mass, etc 3 78 

Chapter VII. Of the Sacrament 

of Penance 3£t| 

Chapter VHI. Of Indulgences and 
the Sacrament of Extreme Unc- 
tion 400 

Chapter IX. Of the Sacrament of 

Holy Orders , 415 

Chapter X. Of the Consecration 
of Bishops and of the Councils 

of the Church 433 

Chapter XI. Of the Pope 44 3 

Chapter XII. Of the Several Dig- 
nitaries of the Church — Of Re- 
ligious Orders and Confraterni- 
ties 457 

Chapter XIII. Of the Sacrament 
of Matrimony 475 



Too much praise cannot be bestowed upon this work. It is a 
clear, concise and interesting presentation of information regarding 
the practices of the Church. There is not a tiresome page in the 
whole book. It is just the book needed to post Catholics upon 
matters with which all should be acquainted, but unhappily are not. 
— Catholic Telegraph, Cincinnati, Ohio. 



iiiIh w 

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